The Longshot

A Letter to my Favorite Beer Company

2011-11-03T13:18:00.000-07:00

Subject: Let Me Tell You A Story

Greetings Bjorn,
The outset of this letter will be formal, but by the end, I hope
we can start emailing each other in such a way that our greetings are,
"Yo bud," or "Hey dude." So hey. I'm Dan, I'm 29 for now, and I'd
like to tell you how I discovered my favorite beer in the world.
I studied theater at Boston College and ended up sticking around
the Boston area for several years beyond my graduation in 2005, and
had scored a job as an actor for an educational theater company. We
traveled a bunch, and as my family has roots in Wisconsin, I delighted
in the chance to get paid for a gig in the midwest. I also realized
that it fell in a different distribution zone. My taste for beer had
matured and tended towards stronger flavors and also yearned to sample
every new thing I could get my hands on. On my first night there in
Appleton, I found a store that had a wall of singles and squealed.
I'm a man, and I squealed. I didn't really, that's a joke. I picked
out a bunch of stuff I had never tried and knocked them out two at a
time over the next few days-I couldn't really go crazy, I did have to
educate adolescent students early in the morning about how not to
bully each other, and I didn't want to undermine my credibility by
beating myself up.
The time came to leave that state which I am fond of, and I had
two beers remaining. Some interesting tea-infused beer, and a Big Sky
IPA. The dilemma was this: I couldn't drink them before the show
(nor did I want to), I would be prohibited from bringing them on the
plane as a carry on, and I couldn't check my bag; we just didn't have
enough time between the gig and boarding for the bag to make it on the
plane, and the bottles might break in transit. I looked at the open
hotel refrigerator in dismay. What to do with these beers? I stored
them in my backpack and decided to figure it out later.
I arrived at the airport and had a revelation. I walked directly
to the bar, ordered some cheese curds, my last Leinenkugel's Red for
what I anticipated to be a long stretch, and said to the bartender,
"I'll be right back." I proceeded to march to the airport bathroom
with my backpack. It was in the stall of this small Appleton, WI
airport bathroom that my tastebuds were appalled at having never
tasted a beer this good before. I nearly moaned in that men's
bathroom as if something more provocative was transpiring. Nope, just
a guy having the best beer he's ever had. I finished it, albeit too
quickly and under duress of time, to return to my awaiting order of
melty cheese.
I may sound crazy, Bjorn, 'ol buddy, but I dejectedly searched
for this beer all up and down the East Coast to no avail. Even when I
began to travel the country, I could not mask my disappointment in the
absence of Big Sky anything in Florida's craft beer specialists "Total
Wine and Spirits." I pleaded for an ex of mine to bring me back some
Big Sky IPA from her trip to Wisconsin. She brought Moose Drool, at
the cost of three broken bottles in her own baggage, a heroic, though
misinformed effort that inadvertently introduced me to the depth of
Big Sky's capability as a brewery. Visiting Chicago, I duped the USPS
into believing that a case of your delicious IPA was, in fact, craft
olive oil that I desired to send to my "friend" in Boston. All
arrived safely, and my discerning father met it well when we shared
some for his birthday. I made a pest of myself in requesting west
coast friends to ship some to me from Beverages and More (Bevmo) and
searched high and low for a reasonable shipping price of this, my
liquid gold. I wrote a comedy sketch about discovering a beer in an
airport bathroom. When I finally took a road trip to move out of
Boston to Los Angeles, I decided that I should first drive to Missoula
from Austin, TX, in order to visit your brewery. I departed firmly
believing that everything you guys produce is GOLD. Not to mention
the many compliments I've received on the hoodie I bought there.
Props to your graphic designer.
Friendo, this obsession may seem unhealthy, but I ended up living
in California where the ability to regularly purchase this and other
fine Big Sky brews led me to firmly realize that my sensibilities do
not tire of this beer, or others by Big Sky (I'm loving the Slow Elk).
Before moving back to Austin, I picked up a case of Big Sky IPA
before I drove all my worldly possessions back to Texas, abandoning a
new microwave in its stead, only to find out that I could now purchase
Big Sky IPA there, and in some interesting gas stations as well. Win.
This brings me to a chance encounter I had the other day at a
tasting with a representative for New Belgium, a fine brewery indeed.
He told me about how he wanted to work for New Belgium so badly and
applied and fate of all fortune, got the job. I want to be your
representative. Here in Austin/San Antonio/Houston/Dallas, or in Los
Angeles, or in San Francisco. Seriously, I'd be flexible for this
job. I have gainful employment as of now, (I drive a pedicab and own
another that I rent) but I am very passionate about your beer and my
most valuable skill is in sales, and bringing people to my point of
view. Nearly all of my work experience has sharpened that skill.
It's certainly an interesting path I've taken, but beer has been with
me all the way, and I know I can introduce people to Big Sky brews
with great success, and grow the excellent brand that I
whole-heartedly believe in.
I hope to hear from you soon, Bjorn.

Sincerely,
Dan Kerrigan
617 571 5452

PS: I've attached that sketch for the heck of it, and a few photos I
just snapped while I wrote this email. Also my resume is slightly
relevant.

Regarding My Layover In Atlanta

2010-11-15T19:32:00.000-08:00

I'm sitting in the Atlanta airport and I actually switched terminals just to get Starbucks cuz fuck Seattle's Best, amiright? So I'm on the fucking gimp tram and this lady in a wheelchair is coming off and the guy pushing her has not done this enough in his life yet where he can forsee re problem of the fattie in the stroller not easily overcoming the gap between the concourse and the train. So this takes a crucial 15 seconds of door is open time and there's like 12 people waiting to enter this door. The lady finally dislodges and somebody tries to enter but the door is closing now. And it is one of those death doors that has cut people in half, there is half a body back in terminal E, in fact, this is a tram full of only lower bodies. So these are Southern folk, they are freaking out and in a large party, so when after much panic, the door decides not to crush one victim and opens, people begin to file in, myself included, like this door is gonna give us all the time in the world, but no. It begins to close again and in an effort to be a gentleman, I put my arm at risk and make the door think it has taken another life. It opens, and the process begins again, and it closes and I'm not about to hold up the whole fucking airport for these four whimsy dipshit ladies so I let it close as one of their friends is stranded outside, left in a terminal ago, and the ladies are distressed. I wave goodbye to the woman as we depart and one of the fatter women tips towards me when the tram goes forward. She apologizes and I tell her "you had to have seen that coming with the way the door tried to close twice." The very attractive
blond doesn't like this even though I've already risked limb for these cunts, so the next 30 seconds of travel are awkward until the automated voice tells us we're arriving at the fucking terminal we all could have walked to if only we weren't so fat and retarded. I point in the forward direction of the tram and tell the woman with balance issues, "You're going to go that way now." The blond scowls, the heiffer chuckles with embarrassment, and then stumbles forward, because she's stupid and didn't listen to me or really likes me and wants me to be right. The door opens and I tell the blonde, "You ladies have a wonderful day," to which, as a Southerner, she begrudgingly responds, "Thanks."

Hahaha LAYOVAS! Amiright?

De LA Soul

2010-06-19T11:50:00.000-07:00

Days 99-100

I claimed my bag (for Spain) and sat outside the terminal in weather that I wanted to be more hospitable in the shade. I garnered solicitation from a gentleman and lady to help them with some charity and all I could think about was drinking a beer. This is a wonderful society. I sported a plastic bag with half a chopped beef sandwich from Saltlick Barbeque in the Austin airport as I trounced up and down the terminal's exterior cement in hopes that I could find a cheap ride to Santa Monica, only 10-13 miles up the street, a short ride by Los Angeles standards. I planned to meet Mr. Shepard for drinks over there since I intended to sleep on his living room furniture. I haggled with the Super Shuttle guy on time of departure, distance, and cost, and proceeded to speak with cab drivers who quoted me at $40 to go up the street. Damn, son! I fretted for my wallet and put the 5 hours old sandwich in my gullet, and then the gentleman who solicited my earlier came over to rest and we had a little chat. I revealed that I was eating imported barbecue and he flashed a friendly jealousy. We talked about cabs and shuttles and he gave me the peace of mind about the workings of LA cabs and shuttles I needed to just eat the $30 like a sandwich.

I arrived in Santa Monica and apparently, you're supposed to inform your driver that you'll be using debit or credit before you even take the ride, and so pulling my debit card out, the guy complained and made a big deal about it and some stranger was about to pay cash for my ride, I guess to give me the ultimate guilt trip about not knowing the rules of how to take an expensive cab ride in LA. I shooed him away and we worked the debit out, of course, because who doesn't take debit these days? Even I take debit!

Shep and I took the usual "occasionally I'm in town and we can catch up" drinks, and it got a little sloppy. We ended up at a bar called Maeve's Residuals, a purported Red Sox bar in the Valley where there are 24 oz cans of PBR, the likes of which I hadn't seen served in an establishment since Savannah, GA, a place where "Get Crushingly Drunk" is one of two options listed under the "Activities" section of the "Welcome to Historic Savannah" pamphlet, the other being "Wake Up Smelling Like Cigarette Smoke". They even invented a whole new adverb in crushingly to describe what kind of drunk is required of you there. And so, in LA, it is once again an option, not because there i nothing to do, but because it is the only way to gain access to your feelings, since I imagine they've been castrated of the ability to interact with others.

Allow me to elaborate, because as much fun as I had with Adam, we do always have a good time, the experience I had in LA was one that seemed to warn me more than ever before of what I planned to do here. It is my final destination, you know. Beyond your friends, the interactions are stunningly superficial, in a way where you can't be upset that you went through the decorum of being polite, whether your effort is genuine or not, but you can smell the rat of their falsity in polite response as you watch them go through the details of a "You're welcome" or holding a door open for you, or politely listening to whatever you have to say, only to wait for a window to interject the non-stop stream of bullshit they are about to vomit into the aural space around you. Great, you've found work as a stunt actor, that doesn't make you a hero, and it sure isn't making you a friend, I thought we were going to trade stories and joke around, but instead you wanted to talk as much as possible to strongarm me out of an unassuming conversation so you could aggressively hit on this girl who is in some non-sensical way, out of your league. There's friendly, and fake friendly, and the possibility exists for you to get one or the other at any time, and the inconsistency is what disappoints. In Boston, I can deal with every person being unwilling to smile back at my stupid grinning mug, since every person is suffering the personality disorder of the northeast. Even so, your friends are all willing participants, and the sincerity of people is a hard bottom line that I can appreciate. Flakes are everywhere, so let's except these circumstances momentarily as I say that in South Florida, people are slow and deliberate and Miami Beach is cold but direct, in a New york City kind of way with a slower pace. In Austin, and even other parts of Texas, warmth is prevalent, truth is regarded, openness and trust between people is preferred, and it's been there that I have felt most justly dealt with in everyday person to person interactions, on all levels. Whew.

I did get the chance to meet up with Debi, who I met in New Orleans, saw and hung out with in Austin, and now she lives in LA. We had drinks at Maeve's residuals since I'm basically right there, watch the Red Sox, and started talking about how I'll arrive in August and it might be a good idea to get an apartment together. I will need roommates and the situation seems ideal, but I trepidatiously enter this verbal agreement since I don't know what I'll be doing for work, or how much capital I'll be starting with. The good news is, I always have places to retreat to, and so, fearlessly into the future, knowing the past trails you until you sever yourself from it. We grab some In 'N Out, and she puts me at Jennie's place to congregate with the intention of seeing the Dodgers first night game of the season, and I do still love me some Manny Ramirez, what a clown.

So my frustration with LA and the fear of dealing with it all is getting to me, and I don't blame myself, though you certainly can choose and comment whether I should or not, I'll entertain all manner of discussions on the subject. This said, I went to the Dodgers game with my best girl-friend in California, Jennie and her husband Orrin and Jenn's sister Lisa. Jennie told me once that Lisa was in Boston and I regretfully had to work and couldn't find the time to meet up with her. In the early post game, I pedaled down Ipswitch to return to Fenway, and I saw two girls walking East. I stopped of course, interested in avoiding the lineups down by the park and leaned on these girls for a ride pretty damned hard. Finally I told them to "just get in," and they did. I began to take them down to Copley Square, and one of the girls on the back says, "My sister's friend does this."
"Oh yeah? What's his name, I probably know him," I reply, since I have seen at that point five seasons worth of drivers.
"Dan," she says.
I turned around and looked at her as the tricycle continued forward. "I'm Dan."
"Jenn's my sister," she said, trying the key in the lock.
Unlocked, "Lisa?"
"Oh my God!"

I randomly gave her sister a pedicab ride. And so, facebook friends thenceforward, we chatted for months until I finally saw her again for the Dodger game. It was a boring game, despite it's back and forth nature, and I have a hard time getting down with fans of other allegiances, I suppose the same way Muslims and Jews don't get along, without rationale for a disagreement, a false construct meant to absorb money or create power being the divide between both of us. I didn't like the Dodgers fans being so vehement in their desire to call the Diamondbacks/D-backs, the D-Bags. recently I discovered a distaste for LA Lakers fans as well. I can't believe anyone would be a fan of the Angels or the Tampa Bay Rays. Let's not get started on the Yankees and their organization. So after a lengthy seven innings, we did all take a trip down to the Short Stop, a dim tavern where I planned to have a few other friends come by and catch me there while I had my hot minute in LA. I caught longtime buddy Laurence, met his girlfriend, and sat down for a chat with old high school friend Dave, who I really hadn't spoken with since my freshman year of college. I had a bad taste in my mouth for how things went in high school, and so distanced myself from most of the people I associated with the period, but Facebook reunites people, people. I've spoken with a lot of folks that have gone completely out of memory. That site is like a pipecleaner for the folds of your friend memory, brush off the residue, they are still alive, and you might be interested to know... Dave and I caught up on all the people we used to know, the good and the sad, the surprises, the most expected failures, a check in on ourselves as well. I met his friends, and they struck me as very LA, but more genuinely friendly since a connection bound us to the same table. I was very happy Dave and I sat down together.

Jennie, Orrin, and Lisa left, so I brought my luggage into the bar, then back out to take a short cab to Koreatown and party for a bit with Mr. Kyle Graham. If there is any solid reason for me to move to LA, it is to work with this animal. He's so quick and sharp, studies improv, has begun submerging himself in work, and I think we'll be excellent mutual motivators to succeed. We always played well off of each other, and the potential for raw eruptions of laughter are always available when we begin a conversational structure. We met, embraced, and I dropped my stuff at his place before we ducked in through the kitchen entrance to a closed pub that had about 15 folks partying. Here lied the pocket of genuine people I needed to see to assuage my fears about being in the driving and traffic capital of the world. One of Kyle's friends, a fellow Irish identifier, refused to let me take it easy, a peer pressure I did enjoy as whiskey flowed down the hatch to excess, despite the fact that I had to catch a Super Shuttle to the airport the next morning between 8:25am and 8:35am, as stated by the website. We burned it late, and I didn't fight too hard since I only really had to awaken, exit, and sit down in different places for hours on end. A voiceover job cookie for a videogame got dangled in front of me to tempt me more into the relocation, stirring the old sauce about getting paid to do what I like to do again, awakening the very idea for the trip again. It swirls around again, and like a bundle of cables, it carries the power with all the other desires of different colors powering the body to do what it wants. Which one is the ground?

I sat with my eyes half opened and rolled up in the Super Shuttle, teetering between other shuttle customers, probably reeking of the Powers whiskey, the stuff that replaced my blood when I stumbled through Ireland, drank water at the airport Dunkin' Donuts, ate greasy hash browns, and took my window seat on my Virgin America airbus, only to lean against the view of the sky and sleep for 75% of that flight. Back to Boston, again. 80's night tonight. Check out my mouth, Doc, how's it doin? Good? Great, I'm just gonna go pick up $5,500 real quick and go back to Texas. 20 Red Sox games in 27 days, and a visit home in the middle. Jeremy said it best when he said, "He's not making a clean break." It's true, the roots are still there, the draw is there, but the lust for more is the cloud that follows me around these days, and it's about to precipitate.

Statistics:

$66 on transportation services
$10 for LA dodgers ticket
75 minutes or so that this guy just kept fucking talking about himself
215 minutes of sleep before my flight
9 years since I saw Dave Ross
13 innings of baseball, 6 of which we skipped out on. The Dodgers lost anyway.
5.5 hours from LA to Boston.

Drinks from...

Day 100

569 Black and Tan (with Harp) @Maeve's Residuals
570 Black and Tan (with Smithwicks)
571 Black and Tan (Smithwicks)
572 Sierra Nevada
573 Chimay White @Short Stop
574 Chimay White
575 PBR
576 Natural Ice @"Speakeasy"
577 Shiner Bock!! In Cali!!
578 Shot of Powers
579 Shot of Powers
580 Miller Genuine Draft
581 Miller Genuine Draft
582 Shot of Powers

Next: The couchsurfing marathon pedicab project begins, and the maintenance of all things Texas grows tenuous...

The Third Wheel

2010-06-09T20:54:00.000-07:00

Days 101-129

Sometimes I feel like I'm writing just to destroy an entire year. Maybe not, but that's what I fear when I write about the people I'm close to. Will I hurt anybody by writing this? Maybe. While extremely high for the first time in a great stretch of time, and off of only one hit (and I can get a witness), I idiotically tried to edit one of my recent posts, and I endured an extended moment of great self-consciousness and concern, as is often the case when you smoke the marijuana. It is a substance that can provide great perspective, if not sometimes the wrong perspective, but I felt concerned for my friendships and the way people will see me after I reveal the truths in my point of view and the awareness that perhaps I'm just an asshole. I asked my roommate Nick about it, and his stock answer of, "It's good man, just keep doin' what you're doin'," soothed the doubts. So I will, because it is, in my comprehensively dwelled upon opinion, more interesting that way, and those of my friends who love me for who I am will forgive me for my faults, they should know that I cherish them and mean no harm, and operate with the understanding that my actions are mine and I will be responsible for them. Thereby, I am prepared for the pain of any severances I incur through my bluntness, but not entirely prepared since I'm kind of an emo bitch. I'll miss you :-(

I touched down in Boston and felt extremely well rested, my direct flight a respite from all the extensive flight changes of the typical frugal flying that I choose. Silver line, to green line, to Shea's place. Shea had offered me her bed for a stretch of time stating she could sleep with her boyfriend, and only laid down the no sex, jacking off, or eating in her bed rules, which I can totally abide by-I mean when do I ever eat in bed? I thought to myself in a flash, "I'm back in Boston, it's nearly impossible for me to get laid here anyway, I'll have to go out on like a million dates for that to happen," and replied, "OK." I had my suitcase full of clothing, my helmet, and some cold gear for any of those shitty, rainy Red Sox shifts that I anticipated, and got. It was a Thursday and so before even thinking about the stretch of work ahead of me, and all the revolutions I would make on a tricycle, I had to hit up that old 80's night at Common Ground. This is place I've loved, hated, and been kicked out of. I've met girls here that I've dated for months, or weeks, or once. It's been a wealth of drama and enjoyment, a go to for friends on Thursdays for "the cheese," which implies cheesy 80's music. In fact, Elaine, who I'll meet in Salt Lake City to continue up to Portland with is a girl I met at Common Ground for 80's night. One of my more interesting dating sagas developed out of this place with a girl named Tammy. She approached me for our first encounter, the neon on my torso a beacon to which she guided herself, or maybe it was pheremonal, because I smelled like a bag of sweaty assholes, and she asked a rookie pedicabber and me why we didn't wear helmets. Conversation, dancing, then numbers. We had this slow flirtatious boiling that couldn't quite work, our work schedules being almost entirely incompatible. I went out of my way on a shift to give her a ride around the block while she stepped out from beers with her coworkers, just to give her a little thrill. I asked her to the Pedicab Formal last year, and she was a bit distracted as a date with work issues, she being a busy economist fused to a blackberry, and I having honestly blacked out about two thirds through on my empty stomach, the sustenance that our host, The Beehive, offered being insufficient to lay a blanket over alcohol over and expect to remember your friend's three dates' names that night or the next day. I have been told that I kept it together, classy Kerrigan. I know I walked her all the way back to the Pru since she needed to go back to work that night, and gave her a proper gentleman's goodbye. We only chilled again when one night we saw each other at Common Ground. She ended up wasted, her friends had left, and there was no way in hell I was watching her get on a bicycle to ride 5 hilly, train tack laden miles back to Jamaica Plain. We walked the mile back to my place, and I put her to sleep on the couch, and I went upstairs to my bed. It wasn't until the next morning after serving her breakfast, and laughing with her at this story about getting stuck with way too many frozen waffles, the funniest story she ever told me, that something happened. It got very, very heavy for about ten minutes until my roommate opened his door and the process was completely startled. And in what could have been the "make" of a continued relationship, I progressively lost my punctuality for the shows I had to go perform at the Boston Children's Museum, my call time rapidly approaching. For all my sensitivity about her condition the night before, and the dotted history between us of good and interesting and weird encounters, I feel like I can break it all down into that final moment where I didn't ditch out on the kids and the $52 and the accountability to work just for a great moment between us, instead, parting ways on bikes nearly at my doorstep, kissing her goodbye, and like a bonehead, only giving her verbal directions to get back home and not riding with her to a more suitable point of departure, as easy as that would have been. I later saw her at another Allston area hipster dance night, one that had ensued after a comedy show I had done at the same venue. I was missing teeth from my November bike accident, and our conversation felt like we were talking about economics, not an area I can comfortably navigate with words, no less confidently with two teeth missing. Sometimes the universe likes to hand me serendipity, and/or closure. I didn't see or hear from her again until I randomly saw her pedicabbing during this month of riding. She looked at me like I had two heads, back in Boston despite what she knew about my previous departure, me with a four month deep, fierce beard, on a tricycle with two huge passengers. And there I was, back in the spawning point of this story and many others, with my good friend Shea, drinking beers and dancing to the 80's. Welcome back to Boston, Kerrigan, don't let the old wares wear you out, don't let your ghosts haunt you.

The next day was straight to work. Ten games in a row begins on Friday, ends, then seven days later, ten more. I plan to ride all but one, and attend the one I don't ride for the Kyle Crand/Dan Kerrigan Annual All Day Bender. It's weird coming back after some travel and some big pedicab stories. The old welcome back, the big smiles, the hugs and once-overs of the people who have changed slightly since you last saw them. Ten pounds more or less, a haircut, or promotion later, good to see you, look at you, what's going on, how's it been? Now let me sign up for that tricycle. I have plenty to say on the topic of pedicabbing, as I think it might be clear from how long I've been involved in this profession, but for me this month went by like reruns of Futurama, I've seen 'em all, but I still love it, and I'm always finding new stuff inside each episode. I went to work, met the rookies, rode as hard as I could, talked my way into big tips, imparted a few words to new guys when it was appropriate, and perhaps even a few times it may not have been, and banked, banked, banked. I easily slipped back into the routine. Claw my eyelids up to my salty forehead, head into work, sign up for bike, get coffee after the most miserable 40 minutes of my life, make enough during pregame that I can foresee a happy ending to the evening, get back to the shop nearly last, go get beers, rinse, repeat, sometimes failing to rinse. The rookies are a new class, hired by the new general manager and my old roommate at 21 Bennett Street, Jeremy. They are hungry, a few natural schmoozers in the bunch, some of them making big time pedicab statements in the first Red Sox series, I'm talkin' like 700 or 800 bucks on opening day, something never done before. I'm back and I'm feeling competitive, the job always makes me that way, my primary function to hit my goals and go back to Texas and break even out of Texas to finish my trip, but inside me I wanna show everyone what's up. It's small and worth little, but my name precedes me a little bit for this small cup of pride, and so people know me before I get there and it's a shoe I have to step back into. I got scheduled for the first three games of the first ten game set, and then all the rest after being on-called in to the two I didn't originally get. The feeling of being at the doorway to ten days straight of intense pedicabbing is intimidating, a little overwhelming, but you do feel a bit like I imagine a baseball player would feel. Just take it one day at a time and don't hurt yourself. And this includes your, ahem, "performance" off the field. I'm just waiting for the day somebody emails the pedicab email list and tries to get a shift covered because they cramped up during some rough sex. No, it won't be me.

The first three games went rather smoothly, even though Sunday managed to be lazy and not quite as lucrative as I had hoped. It's better that way since I got to enjoy some beers with Mr. Keith Cardoza, a wife carrying champion with thighs like steel bridge cables, and he let me bully his mountain bike around for the month. I insisted on paying for the drinks, but think a lot of pedicabbers don't even want to consider favors as favors, it's kind of a brotherhood that way. It was nice to roll in the air again, as cold as it did get here and there, but mostly, it relieved me to not have to have the same conversation with cab drivers over and over and then pay them for it, and the ride home. If they are nice, I tell them I'm a pedicab driver and we talk about it, of course, and the same questions come up: How does it work, what do you make, where do you go, and all the other ones. It is always funny to hear a Haitian man skirt around the appropriate way to ask me how it goes when I take bigger people. Stock answer for everyone who wants to know: We just go slower. Keith gave me leave from this repetitive experience, and saved me about $15 nearly 15 times, about 15 trips to the Pour House as it goes with the hook up I occasionally see there, or plenty of PBR's at a dollar a pop in the shop.

I had already approached the thousand dollar mark for the homestand, but it was Marathon Monday that really set the tone for the pedicab tour de force. I thought I got up so early on Marathon Monday that I leisurely commuted to the shop, confident I'd obtain an acceptable bike, and underestimating the rookies and their drive to acquire the coveted Main Street bikes that are faster and more narrow for beating traffic. By the time I got in, they were all gone. I cursed my fate, a 14 hour day with an accompanying 60 extra pounds for its duration. Nuts. But I went to work. In past years, the big mistake I made in working the marathon was that I left Fenway and I swore to myself, after having worked three of them previously, that I would not make that mistake again. When I pedicab, I operate on an adaptive goal system. Tips can be low, or large, and one must always consider what is possible when aiming to earn a certain amount, and then when approaching that number, factor in how much time is left to earn the difference between what you have, and what you want, and check in with your body, and see if you need time to eat, or drink more water, or perhaps a round of ibuprofin is necessary. How long do I have to make a stop if I need to make $150 in the next 3 hours? How many rides at $20 do I need to make that happen? Just one of the next five rides has to be a tip up over $30. From here I put on a series of performances, physical and verbal to get what I need, but before any of that, you have to get people in the bike. And then sometimes I just don't think, because I don't even have time to, I just ride and balance my weight on the handlebars and just kick into the pedals for speed, and have a lot of familiar conversations with whoever is on the back, assuring them they shouldn't feel bad, even though I know they will anyway, and I'll play up the pain a little with a high pitched "Whew" after cresting a hill. I didn't start my day thinking I could do it, but by the end, I had record numbers for Boston on my mind.

I took only one trip into the heart of the Back Bay, where the marathon concluded in Copley Square. Just as I dropped a ride off on a marathon-route confused Newbury Street, two fellas up around 400 lbs each asked me if I could get them to the Westin in Copley Square. Where we were located at that moment was somewhere that on any other day would have been embarrassingly close to ask for a ride there, perhaps only 300 yards. The marathon cut any pedestrian traffic off to cross from one side of Boylston Street to the other as exhausted runners walked out their blisters, found the medical tents, ate chips, wore medals, and wrapped themselves in mylar to shine as fuckin' badass dudes all day and night long. So we took the ride. Every access point was closed and all we could do was go all the way down to Arlington Street and around the entirety of the Back Bay. I've got over 800 lbs of "deadweight" in my cab, plus the 200 of the cab, plus the 170 of me, and the fiberglass is flexing down to kiss the attached LED lights to the tire, and so I hear a grind and feel the friction for what ends up being 1.75 miles of slow going. I start up Columbus Ave and it's there that I see Tammy, sometime shortly after 5, giant men in tow, beard of an epic journey, sweating like a bastard, huge smile on my face, fake teeth filling up the gap. I bet her heart skipped a beat from the look she gave me, until she got a chance to break it down into derivatives or something like that. I got another ride up towards Fenway, and every ride after that was either to or from the park, always returning, tipping just a few kids off to the idea, scraping up rides until 1 am, exhausted as a marathoner, throwing my shoulders forward to push the weight over my leg to get gravity to force the pain into the cranks and get that Andrew Jackson paper. $1043, walked with $883. Let's ride another game tomorrow.

It's hard to write about most individual days, or individual games since when I pedicab in Boston, it becomes a routine that blends together in the same way I imagine any career blends together. Tell me about your month of work two months ago, would you? Oh, you can't really remember any specifics? Your boss exhibited some douchey qualities? You drank some coffee? You programmed html? Interesting, now something more specific, if you would. And you know what? They don't really matter, the details but they are what your day is built out of, so the also do. A lot of cruising around on a tricycle, jockeying for rides, talking people into your mobile couch. Lots of using the same lines to entertain different people. A lot of wearing neon green, tons of water, masses of food. The occasional attitude adjustment ice cream Snickers bar to make my inner fatboy happy and fun again. A lot of going to bars in a pack of neon, getting cred, cutting weekend lines with a smile and a nod, having people start the conversations with us, putting fast beers down before the bars close, leaving with that fading burn in your esophagus from a 10 oz pull from a giant mug that you have to leave a quarter of behind, while you are ushered in an sympathetic fashion from the bar by the door guy you are buddies with. A bit of that unstable bike mount, the beer entering or the shift finally leaving your legs, a tired football player kicking a pathetic penalty kick after 120 minutes of play, and scoring because the goalie guessed wrong and watched the ball roll across the line and stop short a meter from the net, never touching it. It's a liquid dream of progress and ruin for someone like me. A cycle I had to break, because I knew it could eat the rest of my healthy youth, and so in October of 2009, I impulsively booked the ticket to LA, thinking I'd score a vehicle there, and perhaps some satisfaction, but at least, warmth in the midst of friends.

The Saturday of Game 9 of the first 10, I cycled up Beacon Street towards Shea's place, and a guy behind me powered up the same hill along with me. The hill topping out, he caught up to me to mention that he enjoyed watching the cadence of my spins, I looked very motivated and serene in it from behind, and it gave him a sense of perspective and self recognizance that he, too, pedaled uphill in a similar fashion. Turns out he came from Austin. I said to him that it figured because people in Boston don't just talk to other people like that, not even in summer. We laughed off our commonalities and he invited me to a party that ebbed only blocks from Shea's place. I accepted, knowing it would be detrimental to my lazy Sunday performance of game 10, and perhaps hurt the standup show I had lined up two months prior for after the game, but hell, my heart was beating and hard, sleep wasn't close anyhow.

The next day, I kicked back with a few beers after finishing 10 games in a row, some brutal double shifts in the midst of it all, and feeling comfortable about the five beefy trips to the bank I made. I grew tired, but I needed to make myself energetically available for the show I had to perform. I just ran my mind through the iteration of "duplicate the last one" over and over. I biked fast to Central Square, a three mile zip over my favorite stretch of bikeable terrain, the astonishing view of the Mass Ave bridge, flying forwards, yet taking the dangerous seconds to crane my neck back at Boston and watch the skyline emerge in the darkening evening. Coffee, then a chat with the host, then beers as I scratched up my set list, expecting just to talk about the census and fire off another joke or two if I had time. I nearly missed my entrance. I walked back in as they were about to move on and ask me where the fuck I was? I hurried to my bag to grab the census vest, a center piece to a bit, and got in the light. Establishing stage presence, I took my time to organize the stage as I needed it to be for comfort. This process scored the first laugh, since I basically got on stage late and then proceeded to take my time as if it were no issue at all, then, the look up to recognize everyone I had to entertain. Another. Then, from calm organization, I poured out extreme energy. The first joke hit, that locomotive dragging the rest of the freight, the first laugh, the introductory energy picking up steam on a downhill stretch. My car, the census, whaling watching. There just wasn't enough time. Afterwards, Dana, the guy who taught me to love my standup, told me, "That was the best set I've ever seen you do." Humbled to hear it, I silently and proudly compared it to the one I did in Austin, and felt satisfied. Two in a row. It's hard to ignore a good thing like that, happening in two different cities. I burned that night down at old haunts, popped into the Model on the way to Shea's, and sat outside for a long drunken talk with Miranda before putting my head down to transport my life back home for a few days.

I missed my bus, but got the next one, and sat in traffic to New York City. It hurt me to feel that old slowness and squeeze the 2005-2006 educational year memories into my mouth. Taste the delay and feel the discomfort of your ass as you return to New York in traffic. Remember that you did it for a girl, and she thought you did it to pedicab. Recall that you are both better off apart, but sigh for the way she declined your friendship one year after the separation. Texting with Miranda and watching Richard Prior's standup made things better. He really tore into those white folks in Long Beach, and I watched him sweat so badly on stage, and thought, "Now this is a performance!" It seemed like 25% of it had been improvised, but all of it had the spirit of improvisation. His performances were possessed with himself on stage, deeply personal, unconscious always, done when he feels physically and mentally done. I internalized it and tried to bring it to the open mic in NYC, but only had 7 people left in the crowd for my performance, not a show I could read much into. Jay Lee attended, and had he stayed until the end, I would have made $45, enough to cover the several $7 Brooklyn Lagers I had been drinking and pay for my bus trip from Beantown, but he had to be some kind of working stiff and go personally train people very early the following morning, and so his responsible gain became my loss. Responsibility fucks me again, but irresponsibility only nets you short term gains. When you meet a struggler, watch for the clue of the one eminently irresponsible behavior that could be bringing them down. Their fatal flaw and/or their achillies heel, everyone has one, and sometimes they are not easy to spot, and are always even harder to overcome.

Being back at home, I got to see my Ma and dear grandmother, and the rest of our family who were coming in for the week, my cousins Lisa and Mark, and my Aunt Sharon and Uncle Mike, their parents and my mother's brother. We had family time. It was nice. We caught up and talked about everything, and I deftly avoided being drawn into terribly polarized politcal discussions with my Uncle who differs from me in national security issues mostly, and this stemming from a desire for Israel's defense and a distaste for Islamic extremism, positions I understand, yet extending into a wider array of topics that we have discovered are untouchable material when we spend family time together. And so as it went with my pro-Dubya senior year roommate at BC, we got along great by pretending we didn't think about those things, and agreeing on the "purple issues". The bridge of youth to adulthood energized my presence at home since I got to joke around with my cousins, not terribly far off from me in age, family folks now, but largely free for the week from the encompassing duties of parenting. It put me more at ease to divulge and play, when on an average visit I must produce interesting detail about goings on in my world. Not that it is laborious, or at all a trial, but the jazz of improvisation is absent. It's as if I were playing a game of "Questions" versus performing a long form scene. In "Questions" the two players continue a scene with questions and drop new information in the form of questions and ultimately the game ends when the action or fluidity of the scene stalls, and can be played past exhaustion, at which point the game continues, but no substance is gained. In long form, two people volunteer information and take what is spoken and acted upon and build upon it, sometimes creating masterpieces of visuals or absurd thought. There are no limits except for patience to sit and listen, and the pressing need that ultimately, we will all have to sleep at some point. Both are fully capable of being fun, and tedious, it all depends on the energy of the participants matching up with each other.

So much travel and pedicabbing stifled me from writing anything for two weeks, so I had planned to write the second full day I stayed at home. The desire to do it nearly drove me to pathetic angry glass smashing. We went to my grandmother's house and for almost an hour and a half tried to DECIDE on a suitable place to go eat somewhere, settling on some prissy tea room for sandwiches. It took nearly an hour for our server to log our orders and serve us sandwiches. I started getting a little caffeinated and really antsy to get out of that place, and I thought horrible thoughts of disrupting the tea service with broken glass, a few choice words into the air or to a child, or nudity, but kept my cool by venting frustrations to an available Miranda. I felt like nobody at the table really understood the need for me to go get writing done, how much importance it held for me, as if pouring things out could happen any time when family wasn't in town, that my commitment to it seemed frivolous and surely it could wait. This plus hunger plus overly decorated suffocating atmosphere had me boiling. I swear, if a door had started bleeding in there, I would have found an axe and gone Shining on everyone. It says a lot that on this day New Jersey ended up being the refuge I needed to take. Starbucks in an A&P. Holy shit, I never needed Jersey so much, and now I feel dirty for having typed that. Interesting New Jersey beers at my grandmother's helped me celebrate the escape from the tea room, the productivity, and lubricated potentially janky family social interaction. And now when someone is seriously getting under my skin, I say that he is "sending me to the tea room."

All the visiting west coasters wanted to get into New York City, and so did I, so I led us on a bit of a go round. The sun shone and we walked a lot. Jay caught up with us at Lincoln Center and we walked to The Carnegie Deli for an authentic New York experience, which amounts to, "Overeat here because we serve you piles of meat, you fat tourists." It's funny since everyone on this side of my family is particularly fit. So nearly everyone but me ordered giant meat piles, while I had secured a modest sandwich from a personal New York favorite, "The Lunch Box" and ordered a side of steamed veggies claiming I had dietary restrictions, but mostly desiring the sandwich of my choosing from a familiar place, and also feeling the Jewish guilt for entering an establishment with little intent to purchase. Small gains in healthy choices compensate for gaping errors of indulgence, maybe, I can pretend to agree with, sometimes.

We walked through Times Square, sat in its new closed off Broadway fold up chairs, saw the weirdos, and had a moment of "Well this is nice." As the sun lit up my skin, I screened on my interior the memories of my life in Times Square: Selling tickets to comedy clubs, driving a seven human powered circular machine entitled "The Party Bike" and shows and Thai food and working on 47th in a Broadway theatre for almost a year, these things that hurled me towards, and back towards pedicabbing. And when a memory or trigger of a sequence of events illuminates, the gun of causation goes off and you get the floating opportunity to play the game of "If" and/or "Why" until you are satisfied or too frustrated to continue, or perhaps just distracted by a Haitian man dressed up as the Statue of Liberty.

Texas weighed on me in the midst of family and New York City, most of which was devising some way to impress Violet from afar. I might have steered the entourage South into the Lower East Side, or maybe there existed in them a sort of desire to see it anyhow. My cousin Mark starting making passing references at obtaining a beer somewhere, and I certainly had a hard time disagreeing with him. We perused the shops on St. Mark's and, since the inspiration caught me in the knowledge of Vioet's car having only a tape deck, I made a point of popping in to a few music shops and asking them if they had any cassette tapes. I walked down a few steps into the cove of a music shop, and saw a tray of tapes that a large bearded man walked his fingers over. I became instantaneously competetive over the tapes. It turned into a race to see who could be most decisive about wanting certain music in the index, the fastest. I saw his taste in music as he plucked gems from the collection. I struck. Bowie. Talking Heads. Stones. Solid stuff for driving, stuff I knew Violet could make good use of on her drives up to Dallas or wherever to sustain her promising career. Think of me when Bowie gives you the chills and you love it. Victorious, I shelled out for the retro tunes, and settled in to a beer around the corner at what was, to my surprise in New York City, an Irish style pub.

We hashed out logistics for the group to get back to their car effectively, which boiled down to me hailing a cab because I knew the New York secret of how to signal to foreign drivers that us Americans of a different city needed transportation to some set of mysterious coordinates. I wished the family well and sent them off, and would remain in Manhattan to see my pops and his girlfriend, and then meet up with Lindsey, a girl that makes me ponder that there is, in some mysterious form, a universal law of interpersonal magneticism.

When I met Lindsey, the longest relationship I ever maintained had recently been severed after two and a half years. I was a wreck, and my friends urged me to go out and forget about the old and talk up something new. I wore a "uniform" which means a button down collared shirt, and rode downtown on the piece of shit single speed I had picked up earlier that summer, once known as "Hot Streak" but ultimately she had come to be known as "The Time Bomb". I rode with my shirt off so as not to sweat through the black to an even darker, damper, black. I remember talking to a few girls that night and as it always went for me in Boston, no matter how grody or cleaned up, the phone numbers I collected were generally utterly useless. Shane, a pedicabber and friend, tipped me off that a party still plodded on in Allston. I'm in Fanieul Hall, but I have a bike and a day to keep my eyes closed to follow, so I go even though I know I'll ultimately need to return to North Cambridge, a large triangle by Boston area standards. I locked my bike up to some sketchy fence in unfamiliar Lower Allston, and inside I became acquainted with Lindsey. The night played out to a fade, with the exception of a guy, Dave, who I found out had taken an interest in Lindsey for a while, randomly fell onto the table, I suspect to gain attention and sympathy, but his ploy was made of saran wrap; see through, too clingy, and ultimately disposed of, if even used. He lingered as I painstakingly explained to Lindsey why I wore "the uniform" and that I really wasn't a douchebag. She certainly took a hard line, but my story held water and as Dave sat around being annoying, we kissed and started a two week thing that involved a lot of ridiculous Cambridge to Brookline cab rides, and some cute dates. It fit the bill that termination would come with her moving to New York, just as I had suspected termination would come in my time with Meghan when I moved to New York. I visited her when I went to New York, and there existed the straw to grasp at, that just maybe, it was all happening again, that long distance nightmare worth dozing off for. But faded, it went the way of the buffalo, and went out of touch for a while.

Then I think there came a text conversation. If I could ever explain to you how fully and profoundly texting has changed our lives, let me simply serve you my stories as an archetypal example. In texts, we did a little catch up cat and mouse, and finally, on the second of January in 2009, the night before my canceled New Year's Day flight was rescheduled to depart for LA at 7:20 am, we managed to put ourselves in the same place at the same time. I think it really only took a few looks at each other's eyes to remember, and when she looks at me, I feel like there's a joke I'm telling that she gets, but always harbors some playful hostility for. We remembered that we liked the way both looked to each other, and we smiled like dopes until we kissed again. We left the bar together and I got into a cab with her, and the cab took us up to her apartment. Along the way we kissed and I explained about my flight, and how I could only catch one train to get to the airport on time. We arrived, paid the cab driver and she deepened her eyes somehow to request, "Just miss your flight."
"I can't, I'm sorry. I'll come see you as soon as I get back, I promise."

This was right around the time that I started meaning everything I said that isn't a joke. So I changed my return flight from San Francisco to go back to New York instead of Boston. The gesture was too bold. She kind of freaked out about it, and as I hurtled towards NYC on the LIRR, she stopped answering my messages, and I got hung up. Stranded in New York City, until the bus can cart me off. I don't blame her for it, I knew that once the shock of it had subsided, it still impressed as a gesture. The gears of time went round and we spoke again, and now, we meet when I'm around, and go drink together for the sake of a Wednesday, or whatever, and tease the embers of the thing that never turned the corner, and I think that suits us both fine, and we are friends from it all. So that night wrapped up with us sharing an armchair in Fatcat, drinking beer and listening to jazz, playing some table game, and I got that final bus home at 1:40, to turn around and head back to NYC to Beantown the next day, because there were 12 more days to work. And in case you were curious, when I went back to Kenmore to see if the Timebomb was still locked up outside of the Commonwealth Hotel, it had been removed. I hope someone rode it away fromthere, or better yet, a police auction and goes, "Awwww, fuck."

The freedom of a pedicab shift without a Red Sox game is special, there's an unrestricted feeling as you kick your feet up in Copley Square, beat up, hung over, tight, silly, or dour. You have tiiime. Six hours or twelve, you can spend a whole one or two or three out there mocking people. My favorite is when I spot ladies with Victoria's Secret bags and ask them, "Hey, what'd you get at Victoria's Secret?" Usually I get a sneer, often a wry smile, and one time a lady said to me, "Wouldn't YOU like to know?" It's this kind of fun that you can have with people to put yourself in a good mood. Not putting anyone down, per se, but simply giving them a good Boston style hard time. On seeing two girls with matching striped adornments, I quipped, "Is that skirt made of her bag, or is her bag made of your skirt?" Maybe lunch, maybe you suck down a coffee, maybe you make a business call, or pop into the library to drop a deuce, or maybe you are thrown into a work ethic by someone accosting you and plain old asking you if you'll take them to the North End. And you accept and start thinking about those good cheap slices of pizza you can nab if it's before 1:30, and act grateful whether they give you $15 or $40, but it's probably $20. You talk over the Nextel radios and ask how many bikes are at the flower shop, and see if anyone else is making money, or you watch the guy on a scooter windsail through Copley, and try to avoid eye contact with him. Best of all, you're never disappointed if the shift gets called due to rain, you just get your weekend night back.

When you are a pedicabber in Boston, it's perfunctory to be a baller when you are off work. My good friend Linda who I met a few years ago while playing the puppeteer for Audrey II in "Little Shop of Horrors" is a power player, corporate style. When I'm in town, she does like to go out to dinner, and it's turned into a special occasion date for us every now and again, and she asks me, "Where do you want to go?" I run a few places by her and they are all more costly than the best suit I own, and she tells me what she thinks, but mostly we try to come to an agreement on where it should be, and the agreement is that it will be damned good. I think that she makes in one day what it costs to go to Menton or L'Espalier, and my jaw drops every time the check comes, but some of my standard 12 hour Saturdays will also gobble up that dinner debt. Dinner is often a three hour affair, and it is course after course with wines and beers, obscure and fine stuff, some beer that you need a map to discover, followed by a code, a beer Dan Brown would write a novel about, as easy to drink as it would be to read, but in an intelligent way. The least I can do, even knowing her car isn't far off, and having found out that she has plans to attend to after the affair, is have a pedicab waiting outside for us to ride her to her car. I sent specifically for the rookie phenom who pulled some extreme number for the Red Sox home opener since I desired to process what he does that makes him so damned good, something I could clearly do in my post-deliciousness euphoria. He gave me a good enough ride, one that is just weird to think about, from Fort Point Channel through Southie to the pedicab shop in the South End. I gave him $50 including an old school $10 bill that he sold me a few days before for a new $10 bill. I like to collect that stuff.

I took myself back to Boston for this weekend to fit these kinds of things in to the rigorous schedule set in place by the Red Sox. A driver meeting had been planned for on Sunday evening, and we all thought that a local Italian restaurant would cater our event, but a major water pipeline had burst, and Governor Deval Patrick issued a boil order on all water before drinking. Of course, fancy restaurants like Menton were either boiling everything, or using bottled water to cook everything, since I'm sure their profit margins are vastly above their overhead, but not so for Maggiano's. They just couldn't whip up a few trays of chicken and pasta for us in this emergency. The disappointment came with understanding, and a collective helpless shrug, and so we drank for dinner. Pedicab trivia hosted by Carl "Hot Carl" Foss, with a fridge so full of beer, it looked like my old wallet after a doubleheader, you just couldn't believe so much had been collected in one little place! I know for sure Jon Simmons and I played on the same team, and we came up with a pretty great name for our trivia team, "Late Night With Sean Bailey," honoring the surly style with which Mr. Sean Bailey would manage a shift, and that it could only get worse as time progressed into severe drunken disasters of $3 hot-girl rides, broken chains across town, and a mysterious, mutable shop opening time that might be cryptically 20 minutes later than promised. And any good trivia name goes through a metamorphosis of meaning, and playful manipulations of the title are acceptable to the host once you've established your base name. "Early Morning With Rich Mather" was a title that evoked a similarly unpleasant experience for pedicabbers who have encountered the personality in reference, but for those without the knowledge, imagine the attempt to have a conversation with someone that seems to be listening but will not respond and is actually actively ignoring you. It makes you feel like you've violated some basic human law of behavior. It is utterly confusing and altogether unpleasant, especially when regular interaction with this person is necessary, and you come to only expect monosyllabic responses, if anything. And so went our team title for comic emphasis. The question that really won it for us was the big bet we made on knowing the title of the musical "No, No, Nanette" that was financed by the trade of Babe Ruth from the Red Sox to the Yankees. In the middle of the trivia game I suggested a beer run, since we had run out of beer, a feat that only a set of pedicabbers could make easy. A few guys started talking about taking the pedicabs on the beer run. The GM explicitly warned them not to, but they did it anyway. They brought beer back and were then sent home. The next day, those two guys who took the trikes, both veteran managers, were fired. After they were sent home, we recorded our victory. We won Supersoakers, brilliant, neon-colored trophies of our trivia expertise, but the victory felt incomplete with the fate of the jobs of personalities we loved in the balance. I left mine in the shop, and I don't know who has it now. I hope he or she correctly answers the question of, "Should I supersoak that ho?" The answer, of course, being "Supersoak that ho." Relax, it's a rap lyric reference.

We all partied at T.C.'s Lounge after abdicating the shop. People started going after the porn DVD's in the skill crane, and with astounding success. Five separate drivers obtained raunchily titled video discs, a few of which I recall being, "Young Girls Luv Cum," and another called "Black Virgins". Simple and eloquent, we know what we'll get in these films, and it's not skilled editing, or special effects, and it's likely not virgins either. My trivia compadre, Jon scored the latter of the two masterpieces of American cinema, and subsequently a group of six or so pedicab drivers all feeding dollar bills into the machine, elevated Jon, and carried him about a half mile down to the Charles as he drunkenly screamed obscenities about his sexy, and racially charged victory, his second and more glorious trophy of the evening, realizing a little too late that he was going to be put in the Charles River, yet submitting and allowing it to happen like a champ.

There were a significant amount of hangovers when the second ten game Red Sox homestand began the next day. Somebody who missed the prior evenings proceedings asked Jeremy how trivia went, and his immediate answer started with, "Welp, two guys got fired..." Fortunately for the bereaved of lost drunkeness, it was hot enough to sweat it out after half a dozen rides, and I had until about 3:30 to make the knuckle dragging entrance to the shop, so I had already almost completed the recovery checklist. I cannot procure any useful information about this day, except to say that I worked, made money, I probably made someone laugh. The days washed over like the late night, salty showers after the shift, where you lean on the wall and just hope you don't knock the beer over when you reach for it, because you are fried. I stayed two nights out in Brighton, where I used to live. It might have been more, since hanging out with Jeremy is always enjoyable, but returning to Bennett St has its drawbacks. The aforementioned Rich lives there, and he's as bad with dogs as he is with humans, and you could tell that if Rich could talk to others like most normal people can release words and ideas, he'd be a real dick, just like his dog. He thinks anyone that doesn't like his dick of a dog is a dick because they don't like dogs in general. What a dick. And his major qualm with me is all the mail that still goes to that address for me. I'm not saying it's a clean thing, really, but having my mail still sent there so that my insurance company believes I'm still a Massachusetts resident is important to me, but Rich make obnoxious rusty nail complaints about how I really need to get my mail forwarded. It's not like I'm a Scientologist and I told them I'd host meetings at the house, and moved away, and they come trying to convert the remaining humans, and kids in guy Faukes masks hang out outside the house, although once Jeremy moves out, this might be a good practical joke. I left my bag in the front hallway, it wasn't hurting anybody, but Rich says things like, "What does Dan think this is, his hotel?" No Rich, I think I have a friend that resides in this house and he said I could rest my bones there for a night or two, on the leather couch I went and acquired that you still use. Didn't you get the text message about it being OK if I crashed for a night? You did, but you didn't respond? Please eat some mild poison. I still have stuff there, I'm trying to ditch it through craigslist remotely. With any luck, that will go smoothly, and I'll eliminate Rich from my life entirely. He seemed harmless at first, hurt that we almost got an apartment without him, and we all felt a little sorry, but then he turned pissy and passive aggresive. Sometimes Facebook tells me I should reconnect with him. When I hit 1000 friends, I'll defriend him. I'm actively convincing strangers to add me on Facebook so I can celebrate that day sooner. 935 and counting... The best parts about staying there was that I discovered I had left a towel in the bathroom, and so could shower and be dry, and obtained the set of jumper cables I was lent by a stranger in too much of a hurry to give me a second jump in a row. The details of this come later. My exit came with a particular glory of not just going, but bending the MBTA to my whims, and traveling from Brighton Center to Davis Square in 21 minutes. I felt like I was surfing the big one, except I had paid $1.70, and read the Metro along the way. Alas, it had little to compare to surfing, my bad, but I keep track of these things, and make silly comparisons.

I just played patient for the all day bender, that annual beast of a day where Kyle Crand and I go to a Red Sox game and ostentatiously display that we are having a special event. Jeremy planned to join us this year, and for all the threats I've made to the general manager of walking into the Capital Grille to have dinner, this time I meant business, and business equals steak. The GM and I established a relationship a few years ago where he gives me a ring from his phone when he has a pick up from his restaurant. He'd call me before calling the company. Typically it went like this.

"Hello," I'd answer in the middle of my ride, ignoring my fare.
"Dan man."
"Hey!"
"Hey, it's Chris at the Capital Grille," he'd state with a gentleman's subtle pride in who he is.
"Hey Chris," I knew who it was when I said hello. Hell, I have him programmed in, and he knew it too.
"I need two bikes in about ten minutes," he flatly stated, knowing I'd be there, there was never unavailability.
"I'll make it happen," I might have panted. "See you soon," turning to my passengers, "So where can I put you guys?"
He called me a few times while I dicked around in Texas, looking for bikes at the Grille. I had to call the company for him and arrange the bikes to go, wistful of working the Red Sox game.

So that Thursday we had a reservation for three at 5:30, and we went in looking good, but casual, except me, I wore my Red Sox shirt, and that gnarly beard that got me called homeless, and we ordered and prepared to dish out the big paper. I had my old money in my pocket, and you know what that means, and no, I wasn't broke. We ate more than our stomachs could really handle. Adam, our server brought us some recommended selections of wine to go with our steaks, and Jeremy even tried some, or I imagined him to, but I think he did. I think we ordered too much, and afterwards I understood when people would waddle out of the door that the valet opened for them, and decline a ride, burping out, "I need to walk," and nodding as if I knew what they meant. But we planned on the ride no matter what, we had to be bigshots. We usually request our driver by bike number. We try to pick out the bike that sucks the worst to ride, and our tip makes their tardiness to work and bad fortune a sudden positive. This time, we just thought Nate Gomes deserved a gift, and he arrived, and for a ride to Jerry Remy's that any pedicabber would probably get $10 from, be happy to see $15, but would most likely earn $20, we dropped $64 on the guy. Playin' like pimps, were we. Kyle threw the extra $4 just for emphasis and to make the tip amount quirky, I suspect.

There we met Jack, my host at the time, friend I met through Mike Marshall a few summers ago, and he worked the deal out for our tickets, cheap enough that we need not deal with those glorious citizens, the Fenway scalpers. We took a beer down at Jerry Remy's as the Sox started getting pummeled right away-Daisuke getting into early trouble, to settle down later, as per usual. After the bottom of the 1st, we felt the urge to actually enter the staidum. I don't entertain much in the way of religious feelings, but for me, entering Fenway Park is as close as it gets, apart from those spontaneous moments of feeling like I'm experiencing too much coincidence, or luck, or beauty. I figure only Red Sox fans will understand, or perhaps sports fanatics, and as sports fanatics go, I'm tame, not fanatical, yet fervent. It is the way religion, if there were one that is true, ought to feel: Excitement to arrive, observation is crucial, the sensation of belonging to a large crowd in one space, one world and universe, the ability for a single person to influence nearly 40,000 others with a slow start to a commonly executed chant of "Let's Go Red Sox," five particularly syncopated claps following, and the crowd allowing itself to be influenced for everyone's enjoyment and in the name of supporting what we believe in, a few guys down there playing a game so we will be entertained. And that crowd is overheard on TV, the jolt to the chant unbeknownst to potentially millions of viewers, and yet the chant so familiar, the nails still being bitten, the hope that God will reward the faithful never muted until all hope is lost. What church do you join to get that? I guess if they lose, it could be any church you feel like picking, since in my opinion, you just don't win with organized religion, only in sports. This, or I am the delusional one, or it is one and the same, any number can play. Any way you look at it you lose if you don't do for yourself. I won that day. We surreptitiously improved our seats, the Red Sox came back to win, and we scored John Nolan in a Mainstreet to return.

The bender headed to 80's night, and we were denied access in a blaze of argument. How else should it go? The best part of it was after that we went to a different bar, then Kyle left, and I thought that since I knew the name of the bouncer who refused our entry, I could go back to try again. It was an action that wore the mark of the all day bender. I'm pretty sure I ended up at the Model for "the unnecessary drink" where there's really no reason to have that last one at all.

The next day I arrived egregiously late for my day shift before my night shift, but if you're paying, you're paying, and if you're not working, you're still paying. I must admit, the details are scant about this weekend except for some numbers. I lost my phone in Vancouver, and with it, lost were many notes I made on actions I took and beers I drank. You'd be surprised how much one small record of where I had a PBR can conjure to a human mind, the location written, the people, the jokes, the time of it all available from that reminder. What a shame. All I have to use as reminders are the updates I made to my Facebook status, and in this all I find are statements like, "Dan Kerrigan: The Science of Punching Testicles." How useful. I guess back in May I didn't realize there were more important things than punching testicles, and the scientific explanations for such behavior. And truly, I had this conversation about the best direction in which to punch at the testes, and explained that it should be downward to the left OR right, as to trap the balls in their own sack, against the greater, more solid mass of the human body, perhaps hitting them so that the penis, if slightly to one side, might even be avoided entirely by the force of the knuckles, not that your penis would really care. I mean, its all very elementary.

You can't go to Boston for a month in the spring and expect to get out of it without getting the classic $5 ride, or feeling just 35 degrees Fahrenheit on your face at some point. The annoyance of it reminded me I'd left and swam in warm water on Easter, and returned to Boston for business way more than pleasure. The entirety of the second ten game set did not surpass the profitability of the first, but the feat of sustaining functionality throughout all of the games I obtained through scheduling was still no small feat. I am curious, if it existed, how close 22 shifts out of 27 days would come on a scale of difficulty where the top would be represented by respectably completing the Tour de France. I know the least of my shifts stretches about 25 miles traveled on a pedicab that is up to twenty times as heavy as your typical "tour" bike, before you stack some fatties on the back to tow around. How long are those stages? I might have some French people to sweat on soon. I used to placate my father with cycling in lieu of running as a child in need of exercise, and I'd mention the Tour as a far off goal, but the work ethic involved in attaining that kind of physical ability eluded me as a chunky, reluctant-to-exercise 11 year old SNES addict. Until my pedicabbing days, the closest I ever really came was beating Uniracers.

Time slips out from under your hands when you start paying attention, like a housefly you try to smash against a table. The moment you try to stop it, it goes just a little faster. I believe that's why dumb horses just let them fly around while they chew hay, but I don't eat hay, nor does my ass stink as badly as a horses, or so I've been told by passengers in my pedicab, or so I've told them, and they've politely agreed, regardless of the truth. The homestand drew to a close and I tried to grasp at those last chances to see my Boston friends and leave everything "perfectly". And as fantastic a last night as I had with Phil, Melissa, and Phil's sister Leah, perfect is really never an option unless you have no expectations, and this personal truth always makes me feel like I've missed someone and will inevitably have to apologize to someone. This time it fell on my very last Boston host, a guy who for all our differences and arguments has been a truly solid friend, one of the poor guys who got fired from the "Trivia Incident." Without getting a chance to say goodbye, I took the borrowed jumpers and made the meeting of myself and "Anne With The Jumpers" happen. She worked down in the financial district, so I rode Keith's bike on its last errand, and hand delivered the cables to her as she popped out of work for a moment. She asked me about Longshot and I remember being touched that she remembered the name. I took off for Game On! with a new Facebook friend and a last name to fill in for "With The Jumpers".

After fulfilling the tradition of eating a massive plate of nachos with Jeremy, I got a few beers I thought Keith would enjoy, a small thank you for the lend of his mountain horse for the month, and placed the bike with the "gift bag" in the shop bike rack. Of course, I had also purchased myself a little present since I had put a few mediocre beers in the pipes during the nacho session. I sat there in the shop joking around with Melissa, Boston Pedicab's under-appreciated adhesive, the month just processing out, relieved, and a tiny buzz on to enjoy the work well done, and the friends I'd miss. Then suddenly I realized I might be testing the punctuality of my chosen airline. I left pleasantly before I began my freak out. I walked down Tremont Street, my eyes darting wildly to find a taxi, now checking my phone compulsively and fretting for every lost minute. I had to return to my host's house and grab my belongings before going to the airport. I got all the way to Mass Ave before getting a guy to turn around for me, and he waited while I ran for the apartment, my stuff, and my flight. I got to the airport, and slid right in through the typically choked and lagging security lines of Logan International, this time not letting my Sigg water bottle fall victim to a small amount of liquid still living inside. A nap to Chicago later, I sat down for my layover at the bar to watch the Celtics take on the Cavs, talking to someone from Texas, still holding enough Boston inside to yell at a television.

The odds and ends between drinks and friends and bike rides and trike rides fell to keeping lines with Violet and Miranda. I guess for all of my absence, and for how short a stint we three have had in any one capacity up until this time mentioned, maintenance of long distance relationships is undeniably difficult, not that any long distance item in the history could possibly be summarized as easy. And to illustrate, simply read the phrase, "Oh yeah, dating that girl in Seattle while I went to school in New York was easy." Sounds foolish, right? Maybe less foolish if you suddenly make those kids rich, but please give me the license to feel singularly correct about how hard long distance can be, at least for me, as much as I've tried. Even a one week vacation from your best girl can give you the taste of what it could be. The abyss of togetherness stung more softly since my return was imminent but the stress of distance made me evaluate things in a starker light. I thought of the distance and the energy I had committed to both of these girls, and I considered the actions I took, and carefully deliberated the two different personalities that I bonded with. I talked so much with Miranda over that month, and only occasionally with Violet. Nothing about all the traded words got very deep, except the connections. I sent Violet those tapes, and a post card with a map of Boston. It was raw and cute, and didn't mention missing her, but was made of the fun we have of the childish way we interact with each other. I hoped she'd be reminded I'm awesome, because I feared losing that special thing with her. In the next moment I could trust in Miranda to talk about anything, tell her any secrets or trivialities. Miranda would mention to me once in a while that we were very different people and I knew, but we both knew that just liking each other and being open and understanding was strong enough to keep something. And retrospectively, I do see the hints that Violet dropped about the nature of our relationship, and chose to focus on the laughing, the fun, the creativity and encouragement we had for each other. To me, the things we built in conversation, in ideas, in pointless improvisations were so great that I guess I missed her hesitance to bring it along further. I started to get uncomfortable with the idea of going back and forth from one to another, and I decided, in specifically important and fundamental ways, that Violet and I were more compatible long term. It was all this self-instigated thought that led me to do what I thought would be the right thing for me, and for Miranda, and I hoped, for Violet. Sometime late at night during my stay at home, I tried to let Miranda down easy, and told her how I felt. I explained in gentle terms, and she got it, and I cried. I told her how hard it was, and how much I wanted our friendship to continue, and we kept talking nearly every day. We broke the would-be boundaries of the new terms just a few days later in how familiar we were through texts and talks, she told me how much it sucks that she actually likes me, and the pet names of "feo" and "fea" never really disappeared. I asked Violet to pick me up at the airport, a request that seemed to ask forgiveness for putting Miranda on the task last time, and Violet agreed to come. She didn't yet know that I laid a line down for Miranda, and I didn't know when I was going to tell her. Of course, for a twist of fate, something came up and Violet couldn't pick me up anymore, and Miranda was willing and free to come get me. When I walked out of the terminal to where she waited, I saw her standing there almost laughing just to see my face again, her smile giving away too much, and I knew she didn't know what to expect. Man, I was so happy to be back in Texas, I went right up to her and kissed her. The kiss slowed, and I knew I had missed her pretty bad. Was I really going to leave in a month?

Statistics:
1,955 mi from my apartment in Austin, TX to The Boston Pedicab shop, roughly.
19 Red Sox Games worked out of 20
22 shifts worked out of 27 days.
$190+ spent on the All Day Bender (A relative steal considering we went to Capital Grille)
$150 tip left at Capital Grill-Quoth our server Adam, "Guys, this is over the top."
$0 + tip for three meals at Capital Grille with sides and whatever.
13 drinks, I believe, on the All Day Bender
Red Sox 11-Angels 6 on Thursday, May 6th
7 cassette tapes sent to Violet
14 times Lugo called me a homeless man because of my beard (or thereabouts)
$5500 approximately to show for the homestand, returning to Texas.

No drink list until about Day 180 due to the theft of my phone after having been assaulted in Vancouver. Yup.

The Longshot

2010-06-08T17:06:00.000-07:00

As the sequence goes, I said in October, "Fuck it, I'm not going to be cold this winter, I'm moving to California," and so purchased my ticket from Boston to Los Angeles for the 5th of January. Then I smashed my face into the rear of a car and knocked two teeth clean out of my head, and I spared no expense in repairs, in the future where I actually pay for those costs. Then I found the Longshot. I had been a part of an online community called "Freecycle," where people have things that they no longer have a use for, but in lieu of throwing them out if they might still be useful to handy or Earth friendly folks, they are put up online for grabs. Free moving boxes, reusing packing peanuts, televisions, and if you want something that somebody might throw out, you can also put the desire for an old generation of ipod out there, or a used cell phone. I've seen a PS3 go up. And I saw a car. I scoffed, "No fuckin' way." Yes, I often curse to myself. It's a longshot, but what the heck, right? Send an email! You don't catch any fish if you don't go fishing. I get a reply back that tells me it didn't work out with the first person, and I should come take a look. I guess I have to! One needs to explore these leads-if its for free, it's highly unlikely that it's worth it, but hey. My Uncle Tom is kind enough to pick my toothless ass up at the train station when I get in to Providence, and we head down to Kingston to view this car. The drivers side door has been bent backwards in an accident, and so a new one must be acquired. When we arrive, the owner has been driving the thing around already, and as it comes around the corner, I'm kind of in love. This car has some character. She said that after a year of sitting around that it started right up, which I later learned was a thick line of bullshit. Now I don't really know how to drive stick, I've only done it a couple of times, once was when I ignorantly looked for my first car, and idiotically driving his vehicle around, the owner looked at me like I just shat on his front porch and lit it on fire and stood there waiting for him to find out. This time intimidated me even more, even though I knew better. I got in this thing and whipped it around a few turns and got her going, got the hang of it all fairly quickly, I thought. The car only had 134K on it for a 26 year old car. Apparently a guy had driven it a mile and a half to work and back every day for 20 years. Glad it's not my life. It had been from Boston during Mayor Flynn's administration, to Missouri and back. I can tell by the remnants of the 20 something year old Allston-Brighton parking sticker. But the car is working, man, it's going, the engine is lookin' pretty good. Now all I have to do is find the door, another task with the odds of success being stacked against the good guys. Maggie, the owner, tells me that if I tow it away, it's mine. I tell her I'll get back to her later in the day. She's dying to unload this thing, it's clear. I call around to auto salvage places for a few hours and actually find a place that has a replacement door, and on top of that good fortune, they are the closest place, and know a towing company across the street. Of course they do. The best part is, that even if the door they have won't go on smoothly, they'll take the car as junk for $150 less the cost of the $75 tow. I can't lose. Not even on travel costs or time, because I got to visit my family in the process. They tow it over to the yard, so now its actually mine. The guy says the door is a pale yellow or brown, and I'm thinking, "Holy shit, it might actually be the same color as my car!" New news, the guy called me and tells me its the wrong door, but he's gonna make a few calls to his junkyard buddies, also I need a new axle since the car clicks when hitting the extremeties of my turning radius. OK, OK, minor setback, but he says he can put the potential door and axle in for about 60 bucks each plus labor. I wait on pins and needles starting to fabricate this trip in my head pondering the possibilities that open up by having a car. Go to Florida to work, Work South by Southwest in Texas, high-tail it to LA via Colorado and Las Vegas. Arrive with extra cash. Could it be possible to move my life from boston to LA and end up in the black? Finally he comes up with a door. He says it's "dirty green" which excites me if I get to rock Packers colors, but really it's only dirty green because of the grime that has piled on it, it's powder blue. It's done and I can get it, so I go get the bill of sale, I got proof of insurance and I went to the RMV ready to get my plates, man, I was excited. This is when they tell me my license has been suspended since 2005. It turns out that a speeding ticket I got in 2004 had never been paid, even though I thought I had covered it. That was enough to get it suspended on its own, but on top of it, it cross referenced with something else. In 2001 in New Hampshire, I was boating without a life vest, and the marine patrol came up on us and issued my friend and me tickets. We spurned them, so I hope his license is still in good standing, or has avoided driving in New Hampshire, or he has discovered the ramifications of going delinquint on the government, which is to say, you will get fucked. I had to shell out $200 in reinstatement fees plus the $250 of the actual citation costs. Damn, it was a phone call making process, transfers, hang-ups, waits from office to office, fax us this, can you fax that for me, all racing to pick this thing up the next day and actually have it registered! I finally had my name cleared, my license reinstated, and there were license plates in my hand! Time to grab this whip and bring it on home, and then move on from that home.

My Uncle Tom brought me down to Kingston again and it was getting dark. I paid the fella for his services, a modest $270 all told for a door and an axle and a tow. I got to the car, it had been running for a while when I arrived, and my uncle asked if it was OK to take off, if I'd be all right. I said sure, but I was not even close to confident about that. I turned the lights on and it died on me. I dipped my head for the good sign. I frantically ran in to see the dude again, they were closing up and had I waited another few minutes, I might have been stranded there. He brought out a jump kit and got me going again, and I braced myself to turn on my lights, thinking, "Don'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdiedon'tdie (clickclick) YESSSSSS!" Now all I have to do is drive it. I chunked it into first and we all went forward with great surprise and trepidation: Me, for being stranded, the car for its mechanical health, the future for what I was about to do to it. The first road I rolled on forgave me for my skills, it was fairly empty and the speed limit and two lanes gave me some room to experiment with my gear switches. I shifted quickly and without proficiency, the car lunging forward as I gritted my remaining teeth hoping I didn't suddenly end up in reverse, but relying on the sounds of the acceleration to cue me to change gears. I successfully stopped at a red light and started back up, and I felt bolstered by this accomplishment. I really should have had a better lesson before I took off in what might have been my Japanese manufactured metal tomb, but I merged onto I-95 N around six in the dark, New England evening.

Traffic heading through Providence suffocated me while I hyperventilated about the dips in speed and sudden downshifts, and the few times I ground a gear incorrectly, adrenaline shooting up my spine, my eyelids flipping backwards as third gear took. I peered nervously at my gas gauge, the old gas in the tank should have evaporated after sitting around for a year in my sci-fi logic, and I wonder if I have enough to make it to Boston. It's gas tank versus distance, and gas tank needs to win this one. I have a ballroom dance lesson to make at 7:30, and I'm on target to get there, even with traffic, and I just watch the gauge drop. Finally, the traffic subsides, and after a few turns that I lean into with my body for fear of my unfamiliar car rolling, I can cruise smoothly, at the speed limit, not aware of what the beast is capable of yet. I-95 to I-93 success, and I'm about 15 minutes away from class when I exit at E. Berkeley to gas up. It's the nearest gas station to the dance lesson, so I'm not thinking about getting stranded at a sketchy gas station next to a halfway house, under a highway, and yet soon I ended up thinking about exactly that, and about expensive Boston tow trucks.

Eighty minutes of driving couldn't juice this battery up enough to stand around for five minutes as I gassed her up. I gave her a start and it wouldn't turn over. Chickchickchickchick. And my first world problem is that I fret for my ballroom dance lesson. "I'm going to be late! I'll never catch up on the new step!" Chickchickchickchickchickchick. "Fuuuck." I guess that Maggie lady had been driving the yellow box around in an effort to mask that the battery is a blink away from being useless. That's when I started to take in my surroundings, and realize I don't have any jumpers, and I might be going to see where Shit Creek dumps out to. I ask the gas station attendant who is fluent in English at about a second grade level if he has jumper cables, but this is new vocabulary for him. After the lesson, he fed me the bad news from behind the bulletproof glass, not for lack of trying to locate a set in various areas of the station. I considered my options and all I could really do was start asking strangers. I ask a few people who look at me like I'm some sort of maniac who needs money, and a few of them reacted with more bitterness for a jump-start request than if I had asked them for $5, you know, for charity. Several declinations through ten helpless minutes later, I found a good samaritan. A girl not too far from my age gassed up and I made my humble request. She broke out from her truck a brand new roadside assistance kit, and unraveled a set of jumper cables. I drooled at the energy they would put into my car. As the battery took in some juice, we chatted a little bit about how I had just gotten the car and I told her that I knew right away that I'd name it Longshot as I drove it up to Boston. I said to myself, 'This thing is going to get me across the country? That's a longshot," and my eyes widened and the odds against this vehicle actually working out for me were pretty great, and the name became apparent. The car started up and anxious to move again and drive away from Sketchy Square, Boston, I turned on the lights. Poop. I panicked and looked around for the girl who had helped me and she was already pulling out of the gas station. I flung myself out of my car and chased her down. Tapping on her window in the December air, right before she tried to enter traffic, she looked at me, nearly horrified, sighed, and rolled her window down.

"It went out again," I said, embarrassed and nervous to ask the same person for the same thing twice. "Can you possibly give me another jump?"
"I'm sorry, I'm in a real hurry, I'm already late," she confessed, observing my expression, and caved, "but you can just take the jumpers if you bring them back."
"Oh, totally," I effused, shocked. "What's your number? I'll bring them back in the next day or two."

I took down her information and planned to make it happen in the next few days when I'd be heading off to her town to attend a friend's party. She gave me the jumpers and I thanked her profusely. I now had the proper tool.

I returned to asking around, and this guy, I think it was an Hispanic gentleman who had been in the military gave me the start and took off. I let the car idle at the gas station, you know, because it was a good idea. I thought it would be long enough to get things going. Then I turned on the lights. Poop.

Another few requests later, a kind effeminate man reluctantly gave me a jump from his white VW GTI, the new hip one. When I asked him for a jump he looked exasperated as he agreed to help. It struck a nerve for me in how so many are willing to help when directly confronted with distress, but we are so selfish and it does take a lot for a great deal of citizens to get past the threshold of one's own self-interests in the name of humanity. If you won't do it, someone else might, but if you don't, how are you helping the sum climate of the human experience? Not that everyone has this goal in mind, and if so, maybe only in the very back of their broader personal goals, or simply just in rare instances, but it is part of the human experience to need help and to be able to offer it and keep intact the thin strands of faith in the human race. While I grant that there are those who will take advantage of the average human's capacity for kindness, for example, some drifter kids in Portland, OR, or your long-story con man trying to get his sick wife on a train to a doctor in Connecticut, or a friendly grifter who always seems to have just gotten out of the hospital, there is a point when the refusal to help can feel despicable, and yet the acquiescence to give charity can be so affirming. And so he gave me that jump, subtly indignant in the brisk air, and I thanked him and even apologized, and you could tell he felt right about lending a hand. He went and I actually prayed, you know, to the Force. This time, I turned my lights on BEFORE I removed the jumpers, and let the car burn fuel for new energy. I resolved to drive directly home, too late to dance, and no longer caring to endure car trouble. I needed the heat of my house and my bed. I sputtered into first and hysterically smashed down the clutch every time I didn't know what to do, and crunched numbers in my head to figure out what gear I belonged in. Turning around from Storrow Drive towards my house provided a cheap and life threatening thrill, and then hitting the stop light on that hill certainly scared the piss out of me that I'd roll back into some unassuming Boston aggressive driver who was a little too far up my ass. Boy was he lucky that I didn't accidentally throw it into third, because I did that a few times in the next few days and stalled out with a thud, not knowing for the life of me what I had done wrong and white-knuckled about the climbing engine temperature on my gauge. I accelerated into my pulled e-brake to prevent the accident, and skidded forward and left, into a parking spot to get another jump tomorrow.

For all I trashed Rich in the last posting, he has an oddly generous side to him. He's willing to help with a lot of things if you ask him. He loves to build stuff, built the bar in our basement when we first moved into 21 Bennett, and dissembled it after we realized it was not a good idea to have erected a bar just feet away from the drunk living in the basement. He built the wheels to my bike with great proficiency, and even took me to a rad bike shop to get the particular spokes that would be best for the structure. He gave me a jump when I needed to go get a new battery. He laughed when he first saw the thing that I intended to drive across the country. So with his jumpers, and that negative way he does things that even carries over slightly into his good moods, we invigorated the car to reach the Autozone that gave me my new battery-which could not keep the car alive after a month of being idly parked in my Austin driveway with the car clock on. Something about this car doesn't let that function turn off, nor will the radio actually turn off, they are always sucking out just a little bit of energy, just like Rich.

I went to a place that did cheap tune-ups to get my car road trip ready. I found out why they were cheap. I was recommended another tune-up by a reputable company in Austin. I went to this place with a guy so clearly foreign that it disturbed me to keep calling him George. George told me about a place that does cheap inspections. After having been issued a ticket down in the Seaport District, I had to supply my window and the City of Boston with some proof that the car could meet the state minimums. My horn was going to be an issue. Sometimes it would speak if you wanted it to, but other times when you really wanted it to, you could beat the ever living shit out of it and it would go Quảng Đức on me, and not a peep for the fire of blows I would rain upon it. I had to take my medicine of bad drivers silently and without audible protest. Many of my made fists were shaken in rage. A good LA and Texas lesson, I figured, since any random driver may be carrying a weapon, and drive by shootings are the easiest to get away with, since you are escaping as the crime is being committed. Yet George did me right by sending me there, the horn did not speak, but the car did pass, and they did get a little something extra for the favor. A mechanic in San Francisco told me that in Massachusetts, my car would have to be taken off the road. Boston City Hall dismissed my ticket in March.

I left Boston for Los Angeles on January 5th, Anne's jumpers still in 21 Bennett Street's closet. All the Longshot has to do now is drive across the country and be reliable in LA traffic...

Statistics:

$650 in total to get my license reinstated and my car registered in Massachusetts
153 days between receiving the jumpers and returning them
$213 for a bogus tune up
77.3 harrowing miles from the junkyard where my car was to that gas station
6.3 anus puckering miles from the gas station to 21 Bennett St.
$125 for 6 ballroom dance lessons at Boston Center for Adult Education
5 total jump starts in 2 days
$270 total to tow the car, replace an axle, and put on my mismatched door.
5 years that my license had actually been suspended. How about that? Sure did get away with one there.
$10 claimed as the sale price of the vehicle, 0 actually paid to the previous owner for the title.

Text-iles

2010-05-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

Days 86-99

If it's gone from my memory, it should be gone from my memory. This is a new Irish expression that I just invented because I am partly Irish and qualified to do so as somebody who has blacked out drunk before. Perhaps some drunk had invented it before, but forgot all about it. I reveal this revelation to rationalize my way out of certain details that have escaped, perhaps a moment in time will unearth them from the recesses of my grey matter curtains, but until the second or third draft of these entries, we shall all have to deal with the idea that perhaps some of the full picture has been omitted, and that this is the most resolute picture we will receive. So welcome to my incomplete life, I hope it mostly satisfies.

I don't know how delirious I became after the marathon of census hours I logged in woods and parking lots, and this very well might be out of order in sequence, in fact, it's abundantly clear that it happened the day before. It seemed to me that a few short hours later we were back to work trying to enumerate far less volatile locations. I only slept for four solid hours before opening my eyes in red urgency. Three something. I made phone arrangements for the next assignment and it boiled down to meeting at my house for an enumeration operation that took us down the block to a crack-cocaine heavy area, swimming in alcohol and grifting. We, the four youngest members of our training group, sat mocking ourselves, all with a beer in my run down neighborhood, the front yard recently mowed by a crackhead with a probably stolen weedwhacker. He did a good job for the twenty bucks we sent down the street to his dealer.

My group which was made up of Violet, myself and a young UT student named "Lyons", was designated to an area very close to my house, a place I commonly refer to in jest as "hooker East", since on my way home, the whores on the corner of 12th and Chicon cat call to me as if I'll hit the brakes on my bike when I suddenly realize that skanky STD sex with an absolute mess of a cracked out human is exactly what I need on my way home from ANYWHERE. Yes, there are several, and they all hang out by a convenience store that has "That's What She Said Mart!" spray painted on the outer wall of the second floor above the actual mart. I shuddered while rolling past a lady putting some lipstick on while sitting on a dilapidated section of masonry that led to no significant or worthy structure, only to be greeted in hopes that I would pay money to fuck her. I'm just two blocks East of this, enough space to feel safe, but just close enough that occasionally I'll notice in the periphery of my headlights as I turn onto my small block, a delusional or hallucinating person who is perhaps lost, or sleepwalking, or extremely high, having a conversation alone in the dark, unadulterated by the sudden presence of light. It is in this area we are to conduct census work, and we sit waiting for a mobile food van to arrive so that we can interview the hungry, the high, those that have accidentally found themselves there. While we waited, a young man with an angular face and intense eyes asks us for change so he can catch the bus, but Violet and I regretfully informed him that we have none. He tramped around the territory for the duration of our stay, a grifter in poverty, and I think it is unwise to ask his peers to help advance his cause when they too are in need, and where, for all the brisk walking he does with that determined go-getter expression, he might walk somewhere that would yield improved results, or reach the place his "bus" might take him. I think better and figure the bus he's trying to get on is probably crack, and he's always only a few dollars away from getting high, and shamefully young for it. We interview him, and he's kind enough to respond in a way that appeared truthful.

We talked to a man so hopeless to himself in his self loathing of his homosexuality that he could do nothing but get drunk. He was a perfectly sweet man, and we spoke with him for ten or fifteen minutes about all kinds of things. He whittled his day away at a bus stop, drinking, talking through the time, telling us of his family, too prideful to let them help him, too diseased with alcohol to help himself. We inform the government that he exists with a piece of paper.

We tired of sitting on the ridge of a vacant lot waiting for the food van to arrive, and so decided to wander around the area to collect more information than we may otherwise gain, actions not directly authorized by the government, but a tribute to the zeal we felt for being a part of an operation whose success we were at the root level responsible for. Let's take a walk around the crack block!

We approached some people with our badges and bags and pale-ass skin and were just outside of a building that seemed to have a lot of action going on inside. I thought it might have been a bar, but it seemed too busy at this hour for that kind of establishment and so my thoughts immediately turned to drug related circumstances. An older gentleman gave us a line of bullshit that just cracked his ass up, but he counted whether his name was Alotta Fagina and his birthday was today's date, or whatever he actually told us. We moved up the block where a yard sat between two houses looking like it used to have a house on its lot, but the house disintegrated or was sold piecemeal for crack. There must have been 10 or 12 people in this yard, and across the road from it, a few more. We spoke with quite an articulate fellow there, an artist, and philosophical type, a brilliant mind mired in a cesspool of drugs, crime, and the downtrodden. While we conversed, a man sat drunkenly lobbing cynical sentences our way, mocking our new friend, and on the other side, an obese girl smoked crack. The man offered me a drink from his bottle, and I declined, only to be criticized for claiming to be a drinker. If I were a drinker, I'd wake up and be ready for a shot. We filled out forms, and the information didn't matter so much that the girl wasn't actually 16, or anything, so much as they were counted. We made an attempt at entering that yard, but got shouted down, likely looking like three white brats with no business in a ghetto like this. Our new friend drew us a picture to remind us of him and wrote down his email address on one of our census forms. I emailed him and never received a reply. It's an eye opener to see capable sober minds become the hardened gum stuck on the sidewalk. They might just want things that way.

That night, Violet came over to my place. We watched about thirty minutes of a horrible movie called "How To Stuff a Wild Bikini", some 60's beach flick with Buster Keaton as a witch doctor and a plot that made no sense at all. It surprised us both that it tried to be a musical, and Mickey Rooney played a businessman in it and inexplicably there was a scooter race where people teamed up in pairs. A lot of running into hay and antics. We laughed at how abysmal the construction of the movie was, watched some comedy and drank beers, just enjoying a night in, stuff that felt a lot like comfort in a relationship. She spent the night and in the morning she told me she didn't feel right about how things had happened. It was too quick and she didn't know if she was using me, and it didn't feel like the right way to start something. I replied with my logic, words about being interested in satisfying the discomforts she revealed to me. Yes, of course let's do more dates and courtship, and I meant it all, because now to the best of my ability, when I say something, I plan on it being the thing I do, and I did what I said I would because I already knew that she was a person worth spending time with. I think I know these things faster and stay cooler longer than I used to, but I also know myself and my tendency to let my heart rule my head, but I made those statements rationally and with control. She conceded in the discussion, I guess time being the concession, and we proceeded with business as usual, as unusual as our business became.

Later that evening, I connected with Chad and Berto. Berto's birthday party commenced that evening, so attendance was mandatory. I had an OK time, ate a bunch of his cheese plate, but mostly struggled through some awkward conversations and it pressed me as one of those get-togethers where new people meet and don't understand why any others are there and have no interest in continuing any sort of friendship whatsoever, not even in a virtual way on Facebook. Chad and I bailed after a few beers and made a sort of South Congress round of the bars within a block. For Thursday, it could have been a lot bolder, but the night as a musical piece translates into ambiance and sleepiness.

Here's where things start smashing up into a magnificent and intense week of edginess, danger, and honesty. Before going in to pedicab, I met up with Violet for a bit of a date I promised her, and it seems to me that I'll somehow die every time I drive to her place, either because I'm lost and will starve to death, or because the exit to her place is perilous since I have about 70 feet of road space to slow from 50 MPH across three lanes to make a right angle right hand turn. Every time I experience this pattern, I feel like screaming, "AAAAAHHHH WE'RE ALL GONNA DIIII-WHEW! That was close." Arriving alive, we walked to the nearby "Whip In", a place I am a fan of because of its excellent beer selection. They serve delicious American style Indian food there (eg: curry panini), and we ordered a stout little meal and each have two beers while music tracks the background to our cute musings. A gentleman, I picked up the tab, and we walked back to her apartment. She showed me a recent piece of art she created, a naked girl on top of a dead, naked man. The girl is startled, in fact you've caught her in the act of eating the man's heart while she fucks him. Her eyes are hollow like an ancient Greek statue's eyes, but also filled with light as if her pupils hadn't adjusted. The curves are sexual and appealing and the juxtaposition of the nudity and sexuality of the style versus the cannibalism of a body hits me in the gut. I loved it. We talked about it and she made a gift of it to me on the spot.

I went home to retrieve my mountain bike and experienced a downhill ride with the wind all the way to the pedicab shop. I attached the trailer to the bike in that cumbersome process that I began to loathe. Each time I clasped the deadweight onto the seat post, the screws damaged the metal tube, another cost to make money. This weekend, an event called the Texas Relay took place, and for some reason that meant that 6th Street and most of downtown was gonna get real hood up in he-yah. I stayed over by where people are gayer and did OK for the evening, but riding that bike trailer scared the shit out of me. I missed the tricycle, especially bikes 13 and 16, and started formulating a plot to switch companies from Red Devil Rides to Capital Pedicab. I was proud of myself for navigating a double ride through the 2:30 am traffic that piled up after the bars closed all the way down E 7th Street. The trip time deserved more than $20, but I guess that's the new lay of the land in acceptable tips. On my way back to the shop, some fancy moves had to be pulled through some flashy traffic. Some cars had doors that opened vertically, and while in traffic, they stayed open so people could observe the entirety of the bodies contained in the car, or that's what I figured was the cause for that mechanical function. I witnessed on that ride, as I pointed out to my bemused customers, several cars with people in the front that contained baby seats in the back seat, sans baby. Model parents, I'm sure. People sat nearly outside the cars in traffic, with their butts on the bottom of the fully rolled down window frame, looking for a last stab at a chance to connect with a human. "Hey girl, hey ma, baby, baby, what's goin on, what's good, where you goin?" I witnessed my first pair of truck nuts, but far too large, and on a car that, if I were to be the driver, I'd deserve castration. This comes from a man who drives a 1984 Toyota Corolla with a mismatched door. I stopped to take a picture, only to get yelled at by some other pedicabber anxious to move through traffic the wrong way to return to his shop. I pocketed my camera-phone because he wanted to be a real dick about it, but watched in moral rectitude as he got stuck elsewhere in that mess, and began to yell at some vindictive driver for pinching him in a spot where the driver easily could have had patience and let him go. I knew the feeling and also felt that he got what he deserved for being a fucker about me taking a picture of the car nuts.

Back at the shop, I counted out and had a High Life to cool the pedicabbing fire, that energy of endorphins and feeling of gambling and winning colliding with a satisfying workout. I texted Miranda that I finished up with work and she still wanted me to come over, despite the time being 3:30 am. I loved it because after the shift, you just don't cool off that quickly and there's all this unwinding to do. Many nights I've pedicabbed in Boston and gotten home at 3:30 or 4 and didn't go to sleep until 6 in the morning, only to claw my eyelids away from each other to watch myself get ready and pedal back to work. This evening is better because the freedom of the next day being open is on my mind, so spending my last few waking hours relaxing with Miranda, beer in hand, air conditioning blasting, and her and her sweet, but hungry to chew things up dog Jag nearby, soothed me into serenity.

The next day before work, I tried to orchestrate a rendezvous with Violet at the ever elusive taco truck on South Congress. I want to blow this thing up and steal their recipes. Never has a food truck inspired so much ire in me, or perhaps in the history of ire-inspiring food trucks, but then again, I haven't yet seen Portland, OR. I had the mind to collect my trailer and meet her down at this truck, but instead she came towards me and we went to Tacos Selene, a very, very fine taco truck that inspires no such ire, but awe, and sits just blocks from the Red Devil Rides shop. I showed Violet the pedicab shop after we ate and gave her the first pedicab ride of her life. I didn't have all the tricks of a tricycle, but I imagine that the ride satisfied as a first.

The following night of work handed me great disappointment. Whenever the goal of a night of pedicabbing is only to make $100, I feel like I'm failing myself and that there is just no point. I took one ride and got a flat tire. Violet had already gone off to do something excellent downtown and I didn't have a repair kit. Meanwhile, a wedding party exited a building and I declined the ride because of my flat. Another pedicabber grabbed them and scored $50 to go around the corner. Fuck my life. Then when repairs finally showed up, since I didn't have a kit of my own, I sent him off to grab a ride from the same wedding, and changed out the tube, to pump it up with a hand pump about 8 inches long, taking perhaps 5 or 8 minutes to fully pump up the tire, only approximating what is proper, and pinching the flap of skin between my thumb and forefinger over and over through the process. Anger and pain. A little turn for me, a girl named Ryan came by and got something out of her car and I pre-sold her a ride to Congress Ave after she changed into her little dress back at her catering company. I took this one ride, and maybe another two, one having gone up this little ugly hill on 5th street from West to Guadalupe, a hill I know to avoid when I have a heavy load, or challenge when I have potentially big tippers on the back, and discovered I may have been riding on a flat tire the whole time. I ended up on West 6th Street waiting for repairs again, this time for the opposite tire, and feeling damned that there was not enough money in my pocket. I used the same pump to do the job. Pain and anger.

The only thing that made me happy the whole night was the moment I ended up in a short race with a girl from another company, super skinny, sporting a mohawk, wearing skin tight gold. Our rides started cheering us on and I'm hurtin' to keep up because I may have had a flat and riding the trailer is bullshit difficult, and I just barely pull it out to win, embarrassing if I let this stick girl beat me, but impressed that she, even though having the tricycle advantage, can make a match of it. I turned left to drop my ride and she proceeded East on 5th, then turning back to my riders and declare in earnest under a heavy breath about to burst out, "That was so hot for me." The next ride I got puked on my cab. The poor logic of her being in the center of three people riding infuriated me, but I ought to have made it clear that she should be on the end and that if she puked it would be $100, yet I failed to direct or disclaim. I earned $20 for the inconvenience of removing something from my cab that formerly rested inside of her, digesting, swimming in booze, that amateur. Gross, take me home. It was only a little consolation that she did also puke on her friend's pants a bit. Another High Life at the shop to take the edge off.

Here's where it gets kind of intense. The next morning is Easter Sunday and I previously spoke to Violet about going to something called body choir, and had been anticipating going swimming in some watery hole or another. Instead of making it there, I woke up to texts about body choir costing money and that Violet would pay if I came. I didn't at this moment have the get-go to quite move anything yet, so I only double over upwards at around noon to utter a word that has for good and bad reasons been the first waking word I breathe out, "Fuck." Fuck, I missed that thing, fuck I'm tired, fuck I'm hungry, fuck I'm horny, fuck I have to go to 80's night tonight, fuck the Red Sox play the Yankees tonight, fuckin' A MAN, I am waking up before I'm ready to go get coffee with an amazing girl and we are going swimming today! I manage to establish contact and meet Violet down on South 1st where this super cheap coffee shop also does reasonably priced foodstuffs and for less than nearly everywhere will refill my tasty iced coffee. I met her friends Katie and Rachael and they are sweet and hippie types, but to summarize is to overlook complexity, which I qualify by learning much more eventually, but impressions are impressions and they did come from something called "body choir" where people just dance around and do contact improv and act like free spirits, and some particular types like to dance sketchily with young nubile hippie women. Sounds like my kind of place! In seriousness, I felt modestly remorseful that I missed it just for the kick of trying it, and Violet likes a lot of fun things and I could always keep my mind open to try certain things that she deemed worthy of her time, so it personally disappointed, but here and now, folks.

We had our brunch or lunch, all part of the plan, and made off for McKinney Falls, a state park with several swimming holes. On the way Rachel and Katie sat in the backseat since Violet held permanent shotgun and everybody seemed to have an understanding for that, without me needing to even lift an eyebrow. It's the vibe that people can read in Austin, more nonverbal communication occurs here that one is more finely attuned to the subtle. I consider it a mixed blessing since I occasionally suffer episodes of unconscionable thickness. I opened the passenger door for Violet, and continue to seem like a gentleman, though my ulterior motive was to have her unlock my door for me since I have no key that will accomplish the job, the door being foreign to the original vehicle. She gets it and my embarrassment about it combined with my decorum of opening her door for her and stiffening up with my heels clicked together, be-sandaled as they are, respectfully nodding and bleating, "Ma'am," and it made a blushable moment for both of us.

On this day, despite a smidge of fatigue, I experienced awareness, and acted expressively. I've had coffee, and I'm just alert and looking to crack jokes about anything. I wanted to impress Violet's friends, but also know that overtly trying to do so is a recipe for failure.

Recipe for Failure to Impress
1 pt fawning
1 pt offensive joke
2pts self absorbency
pinch of desperation

More of a chemistry model, or 18th century, pre-Fannie Farmer recipe, but an oldie and a goodie.

So I kept cool. I drove us all there and apologized for the Longshot since the topcloth, that thing that sags off of its no longer adhesive life partner, the roof, is now reeeally peeling off of the rear part of the car's ceiling, and brushing the girls in the face, and flapping almost uncontrollably in the 4th gear wind from the roll down windows. They dealt with it, and graciously accepted the circumstances under which my car is mine, and we laughed.

We arrived at the park and skip over small streams of water that have carved their way into the life of the boulders we momentarily took for granted. We found a nice log to hang out by and put our stuff down, some guy they know has joined us to hang out and he can play a little guitar and they make some music since Violet has brought a small drum, and it's nice, I'm just glad to be in the sun and I respirate and damn the Boston winters with a smile, it's April and I'm going swimming, damnit. And we swam. It was certainly cold, and I hesitated to take the plunge, as I tend to do about 75% of the time, the shock of it all being unwelcome, but moving as quickly as you can for a minute always makes things OK, indicative of my lifestyle, I suppose. We swam and played like children, and climbed up through this smooth hole in the mountainous rock. People were jumping off of it into the water, and I wanted a chance as well. We ended up at the point of ascension, surrounded by rock, masked from nearly every other point of view, and shared a deep, wet kiss. In retrospect, I let myself be totally taken by that moment, overwhelming to me, just my kind of romantic movie moment, and I think she might have been there with me for a second, but I have been wrong so many times on things not fact or formula based. It's a kiss I'll never forget, one of the better in my life time, central to the progression of our existence as lovers and friends, and my trip, even with Violet's ensuing bashfulness of its almost public display. Happy Easter, Jesus. I watched her climb up to jump off the rock, assuring her that she had me as a safety net should she lose her grip on the wet rock.

Violet found garbage in the woods to her disappointment, and in tune with her idealistic side, tried to pick it up and collect it for proper removal. She is also a sort of activist, and she had created a fun and brilliant mermaid costume out of plastic six pack rings, "Thank You" plastic bags, and various other discarded plastic items to raise awareness for wasteful plastic and the great plastic wasteland that is three times the size of Texas and floating in the Pacific. I frowned for her because I know how helpless it can feel to be one isolated person fighting a bigger battle. Evil can win in this world. Just beyond in time I saw a mother giving her toddler Coca Cola through a straw and boiled underneath my skin. For me, it always comes back to education. Lady, you're doing a good job to create an obese person with diabetes, but calories be damned, you don't even know that he'll throw a tantrum for Coca Cola because he's too young to understand his addiction to caffeine, do you?

It was early afternoon and Boston was on my mind. I knew that I needed to keep apprised of the Red Sox, and thought of pedicabs flying up and down an open and paved Ipswitch Street, uncontested by cabs or construction, pulling $20 a ride to Little Steve's and Bukowski's. I let the feelings bleed out of me into conversation, and made it clear that I had this game high on my priority list. Violet talked about cooking something and I made mention of some food items I had purchased several days ago, I considered calling them trash at this point. She rejected my attitude and we swung by my house to pick the stuff up, have a beer, and head back to her place so she could construct something out of the ingredients we collected. Back at her place, I found and listened to the game on the radio, kitchen sounds in the background, and enjoyed a beer while a smart, funny, beautiful girl cooked for me. I had it all right there. In the evolution of one's personal navigations of interpersonal relationships, things become clearer as experience grows, and I don't spew this truism to try and sound qualified or official, but to illuminate exactly where I mentally stationed myself sitting on that couch, surrounded by art and the smell of dinner and the sounds of baseball and cleverly constructed hilarious conversations, absorbing alcohol into my bloodstream. I thought to myself, "This is pretty fuckin' sweet. This girl is an unbelievable catch, her willingness and desire to maintain honesty with me is rare, her acceptance of me as weird and as quirky as I am is soothing to those everyday insecurities, as little as I expose them, yet exposing them to her feels natural. I'd be very open to exploring a more serious, monogamous version of this. And she's cooking dinner right now, so let's wait until it tastes good to pass judgements." I didn't actually think the last sentence of that, but looking back from here it makes a pretty good joke. Dinner was fantastic.

The Red Sox fought a good fight, especially since the Yankees represent the Evil Empire, but even though I committed to support my red-stockinged troops, Violet said that her friends were throwing a party, somewhere not far off, so life must go on, we all must make sacrifices, the Sox were down, and plus I get updates on my phone, how adamant must I be as a fan? The party explodes with food, but the environment certainly maintained a chill vibe. I didn't know anyone and chatted with random people, friends of Violet's, let myself be a free body so she could politic with her group. Tame, though I got excited when my phone would vibrate and text me the Red Sox had come from behind to win. We made a slow, courteous exit, and took off for 80's night at Elysium. I knew Miranda would be there, and she is anticipating my presence.

Before I explain this, I've informed both parties of the existence of the other person I'm seeing. Both parties have explicitly stated that this is acceptable to them. In fact, Miranda is also seeing someone else. Violet says it doesn't bother her because it keeps our relationship at ease for her, and is even open to meeting Miranda. I don't know why, but I feel like with all the facts I had collected and what I know of each person that introducing them to each other is going to go swimmingly. I foresaw this meeting happening since I'm interested in seeing Miranda and dancing with her to 80's music, and we had both amped ourselves up for it for a few days. For some reason I didn't tell her Violet would accompany me, I just said to myself, "The more, the merrier." Violet and I entered and danced a little and I looked around for Miranda, but I couldn't find her. I thought maybe she didn't yet show, but as it got later, I got confused by the lack of her presence. Violet and I danced a little, and the music didn't really satisfy my cheesiness craving, the real synthetic, passionate stuff I wanted, but we let ourselves not care. I got my second drink and finally, I spotted her. Miranda had dressed herself up a bit, teased her hair out, and really gone to town for 80's night. She looked goood. I walked up and said hey, we hugged, and I greeted her friends, and we all headed for the floor. I guess I was wrong to blindside her, I have never been in this bountiful situation of doubly dating, but I introduced them on the floor. Violet took the introduction amiably, and Miranda quickly, but not lacking tact. I thought it went fine at first. Miranda went off to dance with her friends and I raised an eyebrow that we couldn't unite parties. Violet looked exhausted, her eyes could barely stay open, and so we made ready to leave. I said goodbye to Miranda, and took off. Not too much later, I got a text saying, "Dude what the fuck was that? You could have warned me. You embarrassed me in front of my friends." Back at Violet's we slept, but I ran concerned thoughts through my head with my eyes closed until I exhausted my brain to sleep.

I texted Miranda back in the morning, telling Violet that Miranda didn't approve of the encounter and that she was pretty upset. I chose to let very little of my distress about it on. How good was it all while I just had the balance? I texted
Miranda regarding the night before and got no response. After Violet and I parted ways, I had a freak out and went directly to Miranda's. I let myself in as is the custom there and she was sleeping. Her dog, Jag, growled at me and woke her up. She seemed nonplussed by my presence, not surprised I'd show my face. "Oh, it's you," she said. We talked about what happened and I didn't understand how I embarrassed her, though I knew what it was that did it. I explained to her that I had no intention of hurting her feelings and that I am honestly that naive that I would think it would be peachy keen for the worlds to collide and we could all live in harmony. Meanwhile in the back of my head is the thought that Miranda frequently pines about wanting to be with a girl and in several circumstances confesses to me that she wants another girl with us. I'm not an idiot, I do not squander these opportunities, but as is the case in my life, good things do have a great way of blowing up in my face. My grandmother says in her steady and wise German tone, "The wheel goes round and sometimes you are up and sometimes you are down." I feel only slightly ashamed to use the expression in reference to a potential threesome, but it applies to so much more as this all unfolds.

Miranda took me back as a friend, but the boundaries were not clear. We still flirted, we still made each other laugh, and the comfort level is the same. I tried to kiss her and she went cadaver on me. Not that I didn't deserve it, but I grew accustomed to this freedom, and its revocation hadn't become a clear reality for me. Parting as friends after issuing my apology for the overstepping of bounds, I took off to write.

Violet is an extremely dedicated artist. I've never watched a person complete tasks so efficiently like she does. She always has an iron in the fire, and is constantly juggling a multitude of commitments. She drives three hours to audition, and always comes back upbeat. Going to Dallas, going to Houston, hanging out in Denton. This girl is made of Texas. She told me about a scene she got tapped for that would be filmed for a directing class, and said the director needed an actor. She forwarded to him the small amount of stuff I have online, and he wanted me to work on the scene for him. Neat, a project!

Meanwhile, my census work reached its last full week of billable hours, and Fletcher handed me a project to oversee by myself. I didn't feel very much on top of my processes, so when people were suggested to me regarding who could assist on the enumeration tasks, I picked only a few of them since the amount of work was scant to begin with, and I picked a person based on their ability to oversee my work, and ensure that we completed it in the proper fashion, t's dotted, eyes crossed and all. Ike, one of the people I didn't choose, called me on the phone shortly after he discovered that I had not offered him work despite the recommendation that he needed work. Ike participated in the Vietnam war. I respect any man who can serve our country, and the fact that I didn't call him had to do with the fact that a few people already talked to me first, and nothing else. It's not like I was trying to pull some crazy ass threesome shit. As an actor, when I see a strange number, I pick up. It could be opportunity!

"Hello?"
"Hey yeah, Danny? This is Ike."
"Hey, Ike. What's up?"
His bluster kicked in. "Yeah, how come you didn't pick me for your project?"
I knew I might get a little heat from somewhere, so I stayed cool, "Ike, I didn't really have that much work for people."
He had been waiting for my first fluent sentence to react, "That's bull shit! Fletcher told you that I needed hours!"
"Well I got emails from Jed and Lily first, and Amy has experience," I reasoned.
And with gusto, savoring every vowel sound and stomping out the consonants, Ike had his royal flush to beat my quadruple nines, "Well you can suck my dick!"

He hung up. Well I never!

I immediately called Fletcher and told him that Ike told me to suck his dick. Fletcher was on my side and in the middle of our conversation, Ike called Fletcher to complain about me. Upon returning to our line, Fletcher elaborated that Ike had served in Vietnam and sounded like he'd been drinking. Doesn't make me want to give him much more work, I'll tell you that! Not the way to obtain more hours, no sirree, Bob! The work itself is not really worth mentioning, not much got accomplished, some people were helpful, others were not, some people got counted, some did not. Drop this off here, let them know you will be back soon. Go get things, be disappointed in how they can't follow instructions. There's got to be a better way.

I got to visit Milena, my favorite sweetheart UPS Store clerk to print out the script I needed for the Kramer vs. Kramer scene I'm planning to do with Violet. Our first encounter was one of subdued flirtation. I needed to print out a document for licensing that I could rewrite into something that my notary public at Chase bank would sign once I could sign it in his presence, and so after asking if they had somewhere to print out documents, she led me to her office computer. It felt almost forbidden because I got to sneak behind the counter into the back to operate. She gave gentle and patient instructions, and I still struggled to make the papers I wanted pop out, but finally figured it out. I fiddled around on my email waiting for my important hard copy documents to get hard while she went up to the front of the store to handle some of her affairs, and after grabbing the sheets I started looking at the comics she had taped to the wall in the back room. I read a few and emitted a low laugh. She caught me reading them. Being caught was better than anything I could have ever said to her, an action that created chemistry, a total bonding moment. She said, "You like my comics?" I smiled. "Yeah." She let this smile loose looking like a first, and clean paint stroke on a blank canvas. We sort of talked about what I was printing and I explained my notary public debacle and this shy girl behind the counter who only bleats the small scripts of the transactions her job forces her to make replied, "I'm a notary public." Whoa. "Really," I blurt in surprise. I'm thinking, "You're too cute to be a notary public!" Said my facebook status that day, "Well it's a good thing that random notary public was around!" I paid for my papers, and the clunkiness of performing a transaction through flirting made both actions better. I didn't have enough stuff to exceed their $5 minimum so I paid with a dollar, and got my coins back. In a moment of supreme cuteness, I wrote my number down and slapped it on the counter before hastily exiting in bashful retreat. It screamed high school antics, and I said bye, and before reaching the door I hear, "Bye Dan." I gave a quick throwback smile, embarrassed I didn't just ask, but afraid that I was so un-smooth that there was no alternative. So I'm back, even though she didn't call, but I have more documents I need to print, and my presence is a moment of function. She led me to the back for the computer, and out of curiosity I looked at her comics again. She caught me again, but informed me, "I haven't gotten any new ones." Smiles. I bring the papers up and she asks if I'm an actor and there is more small talk, and the confession is volunteered when she blurts, "I lost your number."
I wanted her to shoot it out of the air, that flying pink elephant in the room, and with beaming eyes say, "I'll write it down again, but are you gonna use it this time?"
"Yeah."
"Talk to you soon," I said, collecting my documents and myself a little less nervously this time.
And she sounds like she's actually going to call me in the way she says, "Bye, Dan."
I smile more confidently over my shoulder out the door this day. I've got more than I need already. Either way, she hasn't called. Small tragedies are everywhere.

Violet had a show coming up on Thursday and asked me if I'd like to open for her improv troupe. How can I say no? I'm not prepared though, and in my head, the bullet of that thought ricochets all over as if it would not lose velocity, doubt taking over in my ability to adequately perform to open up for her troupe. My last performance of stand-up happened on January 3rd, a half-chubber of a show, if I say so, not terrible, got it out there, but didn't really slay it. A half-chubber beats a limp-dicker, I can say that much, some sets in my memory being so bad I'd rather be taped to the floor and drooled on by a pervy Earth science teacher with halitosis. The limp dicker, the feeling of being not just in your underwear, but your manhood out, flaccid, and making eye contact with everyone like you're supposed to be erect, but it's not gonna happen, the supreme performance anxiety, or certain motivator. Also, sub-in girl parts for universal understanding. I'm sorry family, I'm writing crudely, let us talk about buttfucking instead, shall we? Wait, no. I fear awkwardness from Thursday. My stomach dropped thinking about performing comedy in front of Violet since I respect and regard her talents, so I desired to show her my best, spurred to succeed by the ramifications of a limp-dicker, and anyways it was high time I got back on that horse.

We rehearsed on Tuesday night and my lines were not there yet and I struggled for character and delivery, and it served as a stern reminder of the professionalism I'll need to develop when I start doing this kind of thing in LA. You're at work, so treat it like work, because people like to work with people who are pleasant to work with that don't suck at working. Still, I treated it too loosely. The rehearsal ran short and following the cursory meeting, I asked Violet if she wanted to join me for a drink at Little Woodrow's, where I could watch the Red Sox and Yankees play. I started attempts to indoctrinate her as a Red Sox fan, though our crew leader Fletcher disagreed with me and swore her a soon-to-be Dodgers fan. Probably not a seductive idea in either direction for an artist. I do let these things go, but I see myself in reading back on my own entries and wonder what some of my smaller actions mean in a larger sense, if they carry meaning at all, or if I'm simply an idiot.

Wednesday arrives. Early on, I go get a late lunch or early dinner with Miranda. We're hanging out and communicating again, her flip out on me boomeranged back to her as an overreaction. We went and had a cute little meal at Starseeds, one of her favorite little places to eat, when she eats, which is not quite often enough or with regularity. I've been around when she can't sleep unless she burrows herself into her closet surrounded by her clothes that pile up in the floor. This is a comfortable place for her sometimes and it's sad, but I also know it is what she needs to do to get comfortable. It is sometimes at these moments at 7 am that she'll spring up hungry and eat a cheese plate that Starbucks has allowed her to take away before it is no longer suitable for corporate sale. We meet and dine, and sat outside while she smoked. We talked about her class that she has failed four times and how her mother, a found Christian, will dye her hair blue if Miranda succeeds in finally passing a basic English class, not a thing of shame, but a problem of continued focus. The outlook is good and I encourage her through texts to get to her classes on time and turn her papers in when I wake up early at Violet's. We parted, still chemically reacting for each other, and it felt like a comebacker, or it never left, just hit a bump.

These are two drastically different girls, and yet I act the same natural self, a naked personality with each. This phenomenon has it's own level of appreciation in both exchanges, or so I judge the case. Miranda thinks I'm weird, absorbs a lot of what I say when I ramble, and likes the spectacle of my asininity, Violet appreciates the dorkiness I embrace, a familiar function to her, and plays with it. I show openness and understanding in the presence of both situations and they experience it differently, sometimes it comes across as too soft, or sometimes too sympathetic, but I cannot imagine being a different man. It was all so seamless for a while. When not with one, with the other, when one is busy, the other is free, coffee with one, drinks with the other, interchangeable, smoothly the guy to both women, nothing but fun and beer and jokes and sex everywhere. I wanted it back.

I parked my car on the long commercial strip of Guadalupe Street known as "The Drag" to meet Violet for an in class presentation of the scene we're doing. We were allowed to hold our scripts during the scene, and performed it for about 25 to 30 directing students. Our director manages to get us in first so we can proceed with other plans we've made for that evening. Right before the scene I find my deliveries, I hit all my lines the way I want to, and the scene ends, after which we were subjected to the feedback of a bunch of uninformed students. I didn't appreciate the criticism from them, as open as I tried to be to constructive critcism, which I found a little of. I found it unprofessional of the teacher not to release us from their presence immediately and let OUR director gives us the notes, not everyone in the room who hadn't read or analyzed the scene. It made me grateful for my own education. Holy shit, Dad, it's been valuable! Just kidding, just kidding.

We left and I griped a little to Violet, but we were heading for the "improv shootaround" at the New Movement theater, the second time I've been there. We both adequately improvised our way through a few scenes, nothing monumentally impressive, but just fun, keeping the dust off our generators. I discovered that the following night, they have an open mic and I talked to the right guy about getting on, and going first, so I can brush something up just before needing to show up for Violet's show. After the show, we separated as I made plans to meet up with my former roommate Eruch down in the warehouse district. The show for Violet's improv troupe happens the next day.

I stood around outside of bars on a Wednesday, waiting like a chump, thinking they were in a particular place and caring less than an $8 cover to go meet him until I found out were he is for sure, but it turns out that he very much lived in his typical character and arrived egregiously late. I sort of enjoyed seeing the bad from the street level precepice, a group of rejects in dorky gear, some name like "The Geeks". They had headgear, or helmets, mouthgrear or something that made them look ultra lame. A cute gimmick, something that Eruch might have appreciated, having been in a gimmicky "cock rock" band himself. I saw him walk by and nearly shit myself that he wasn't where I thought he was. My old impatient East Coast self. We went over to the Six Tap Room and as we sat, Miranda headed down to join us. It felt like my skin was echoing catching up with Eruch. He told me about how he and his bandmate Mike kicked our other old roommate Robbie out of their band. Robbie may have been the worst individual I've ever met. When we lived together, he got so drunk on his birthday that when I, the person in charge of collecting rent and bills for distribution to the appropriate collectors, asked him for his late rent, he broke a bottle and attempted to rush upstairs to kill me. He later confessed to me that he drank into a blackout and he learned from his bandmates that he had said, "I'm gonna murder him, that'll be fun." I tried to play a good friend for politics and roommate relations. A few weeks later, a clip full of out of print money went missing from my room, and it couldn't have been anyone else that took it. His band had come back from playing a pretty positive show, and I had come back from 80's night, all a little tipsy, all a little uninhibited, and we spoke frankly, me in front of the three of them, willing to take all arguments in defense of why he should still live there. I won all arguments. It played similar to breaking up with a girl you kinda like, but she's fucking crazy and might kill you, it just has to be done. This is the person that Eruch had cut out of his life, the cancer cured, after disrespecting Eruch's family in his own home in Mexico. I remember being proud of him.

Miranda showed up and the booze did loosen us. We changed venues and ended up alone at another bar, "The Ginger Man," the original bar that started the franchise that I've entered in New York City,and bullied the jukebox to play us our songs in a large establishment with only six or seven folks, like pennies in a sad piggy bank. The Gingerman hosted the rekindling of our fling, as temporary as it would be. "My place or yours?"

The next day Miranda forced me out of hanging out because she ended up almost crashing two meetings into each other, me and her ex-boyfriend Steven. The last time he saw her with someone else, he got really upset, and she apparently really cared about that, and didn't think much about what I'd think about her not telling me and rushing me out the door. And I wouldn't have cared if she had kind of warned me, but she started acting all weird and nervous and pushing me away. I pried the truth out of her, and she started to understand that she upset me, and I guess it transformed into a tradeoff for that 80's night business, and so, knowing we'd work it out later, I got in my car and started the engine and watched her go inside as Longshot warmed. Then Steven showed up. And I just watched. Checked him out, that's the guy. How about that skinny dude. That's the guy whose magnum condom wrappers I've found behind the bed looking for my hat. That's the guy that's in love with Miranda, and she just doesn't want it that way anymore. Time to go.

Enumerative tasks were at hand that Thursday and kept me occupied between other circulating thoughts of two standup comedy shows. I got excited by the idea that after a four month hiatus of performance that I'd do two shows in one night for the first time in my life. I organized my thoughts into stories and worked out a joke that Miranda actually invented, her sense of humor being both cynical and accidental, both of them the right kind of shocking. A happy accident about confusing whaling with whale watching, a standby joke I have now that is dorky enough to work for my face. The rest of my set contained stories of the census variety and regaling the experience of wearing our bright orange vest. I remember going on first at New Movement. Most of what I said tanked, or merely entertained as story, it lacked hits, punchlines, or perhaps the punchlines did not crack, but patted the audience on the arm with eyebrows raised, asking, "get it?" I was running out of time and so unleashed the whaling joke. It caused the first and only real eruption of laughter in my set there. A comfort to leave on, but a little confusing. I guess they just wanted dorky jokes. I have a bunch of em, but oh well. I left after watching the first snippets of a very clever comic who exploited his accent for huge comic rewards.

I biked over to the next show, a whole 2 minutes away, and dismounted with my usual one footed, hand brake hop off, locking up my horse as Violet's friends half viewed me through their warm-ups. I awkwardly stood on the periphery awaiting instruction or introductions, and after the latter, tilted into the slight maze inside. Several familiar faces popped up in the crowd, and I pumped up my anticipation for their enjoyment, despite my insecurity for the impending quality of my performance. "I'm about to try for you all", I think, and almost think "y'all," but focus on the words I think I'll say, ones that will mostly come to me in the moment. Before I really have enough time to think too much about it, Violet goes up on stage and starts to introduce me. Oh, damn, I guess its time to get up and be funny. I'm pulled up by the introduction, thrown into the fire of silence that I need to fill. There's a little dialogue between Violet and I as we play with the air and it comes around that I should talk about my car. I had just recently watched George Carlin do a bit on cars, and how his old style was not curses, anger and cleverness, it was jolly physicality, and somewhere in me the 40 oz of beer and the blood released it all from my brain. I acted out being a participant in traveling by my car, and while singularly unimpressive, the action I lent to it pushed everything I revealed over the edge. I revealed the process of how I need to unlock my car from the passenger side first and climb over to the driver's side to pop the lock, and how often I hit my head, and it started my set with such intimate detail of the environment I described that everything after that flowed in a flood. The only thing that came out of my mouth that didn't go over was my whaling watching joke. I followed it with a humbled, "That worked five minutes ago," and got my follow up laugh that acknowledged the awkward silence. I bowed off stage to give Violet's improv troupe the stage. After their fun performance, Violet offered me the stage again, and so put on the spot, I went up and did another solid five minutes of the old jokes, the stuff that you have in the drawer, the stapler you reach for when you need to bring shit together, except like six staplers. I can confidently say that the whole of this performance, parts one and two, was the best I'd ever done. It truly gave me an epiphany about how I performed on stage, and I later learned that it had been videotaped. I freaked out over that! The thing was not just a fleeting moment, but substance gained!

After the show, a crew of people were going to the nearby Long Branch Inn, a place I'd gone once with Miranda just to check out since we did like to go see various establishments we had never entered. This time with Violet and some friends, it was cozy and I was still kind of in the comic zone, and hanging out was just a great wind down. I'm on an emotional high from the success, but I'm nearly certain that when I'm with Violet, I couldn't be any smarter, and it transcends just this night. I'm not in love with this girl, but I could see myself letting it happen, but at this point, I love her in the way that I love my favorite beer, which is to say, I am amazed that something this good exists and would like to have more of it, please. I feel completely aware, total prescience, almost as if everything inside my sponge is available to me all at once to draw upon. My sentences are better articulated, my jokes own multiple levels more often, and my expressions communicate more with doing less. I remember this only being moments for me, but it was in her voice or eyes, or laugh that sparked me to compress the gunpowder in my head and start firing, yes it feels continually explosive. It's even affecting other aspects of my general demeanor, or maybe it's just being in the South, but to play with someone on your wavelength can be an addictive thrill.

It's Friday, finally, and in dread, I thought about how I'm due to go pedicabbing on the death trap trailers. All day I feared the impending job I will have to do, and come closer and closer to cracking and just quitting the company. I'm on the verge of massive amounts of Boston Pedicab Red Sox dollars, and so I don't feel so bad about it, and the money I'm pulling in from Austinites over two weekend nights is not enough to even cover my rent for a month, and that started to get to me. The closer work time came, the more anxious I got. It reminded me of the time last October when I got hired by the Cambridge Brewing Company as support staff. I trained on a Friday lunch shift and made myself unavailable for the following weekend to pedicab, and as it approached my next shift, a beautiful Wednesday, 70 degrees, nothing really happening, just flat out gorgeous, I sat in my room dressed for work, black shirt, jeans, black shoes, ready to bike over, eyes darting towards the light outside, fretting to friends over that time vampire Facebook that sometimes I think I might just quit. The seconds ticked one at a time like Chinese water torture about to crush my soul at the determined start time of 4:30. It's 4. 4:05. 4:10. 4:11. I called Chris, my boss, a very nice guy and laid it out.

"Hey Chris, it's Dan."
"Hey Dan, what's up," he fed me back with the seasoning of the feeling that something was, in fact, up.
"I gotta be honest with ya, I don't think this is gonna work out," I confessed, falling on the financial sword of this job security, for better or worse.
"Oh yeah?"
"Yeah, I'm sorry to put you in this position," actually feeling sorry for doing it, but knowing that I needed to not work there that day so badly that it didn't matter. "I can still come in and help out tonight if you're gonna need the help."
"Nah, it's OK," he said hollowly. I imagined him rolling his eyes at me, but I stayed sorry since it bought me my freedom.
"Thanks for everything, and sorry again."
"Yeah, take care."

I hung up and tore off my black shirt as if it had diseases and insects sown into it, perhaps it was made of the textile version of shame, and recovered myself with the neon green, a color I've worn so much that I'm surprised it hasn't soaked into my skin. I've even considered how well it would tattoo into me. I breathed and laughed and bragged about quitting to any and all, and proceeded to go pedicab and make twice as much as I would have made at the Cambridge Brewing Company, all the while feeling at total peace with myself. This is nearly the same relief I gave myself after pushing out the words to tell my awesome boss Phil that I didn't want to work that night. To my surprise, he let it all roll off his back since I hadn't really signed up for a shift that week anyway. He wished me luck in Boston and said he'd see me when I got back. Little did he know I didn't plan on riding for him when I returned, seeking tricycle piloting to sustain myself, knowing that I never wanted to ride a trailer ever again.

That night I went out with Chad, his job was sending him to Fort Lauderdale for a while, and so his ex-girlfriend, who came to town since Chad wanted to bring the togetherness back, joined us and we went all over the place. I wore my neon green headband made of a pedicab shirt sleeve and got hit on relentlessly by Dustin, a sweet guy, friend of Berto's and Chad's who joined us in the bar hopping, to give it up. (The headband.) I finally gave in and bequeathed to him my sacred pedicab shirtsleeve, and thereby consummated out friendship. Shortly after, Miranda showed up and it ended up a regular old night of chillin' out and chattin. Miranda and I dropped into Qua, a place that has live sharks in the dance floor, and decided to just go back to my place, it got lame to be out. In retrospect and retrotextive, I start to see that Miranda really was the rock for me being in Austin. Not that Violet was unanavailable, but communications with her were not the same. Miranda I traded nothings almost constinuously. She cared about my randomness, and me for hers, the easy outlet of stabbing at our routines with words to someone, and in so doing, relieving ourselves of the drudgery by communicating our discontents, errant thoughts, desires to see each other, and obtaining sympathy at the push of a few buttons. The following is our conversation on this day, April 9th. My remarks are offset to the right, iPhone style.

Buenos dias feo.
Boner Dias. Sup?
... I cut all my hair off...
Not all of it, I bet you missed a spot
... Fuck...
Haha. I bet you still look cute.
Dude no. My ma and I did it. ... Fuck...
Lol! Oh well! Hurrah for desrtuctive impulses!
What's so bad about it?
Are you bald now?
Naw, not that bad. Lol. Its very grunge rock. I'm actually startin to dig it. Yay for living in the capital of weird too.
And by grunge rock i might actually mean 5 year old kid from the early 90's...Anyways anyways...
Yeah I'm sure you will own it. And you already looked like a 5 year old...
And you aleady look like testicles... Biyitch. Pah!
What are you doing, squeeb?
Bout to go to work. You?
Gonna try to write. Then pedicabbing tonight.
Wanna meet up at some point? It's cool if its late.
Sure. Think you'll be up? Or just play it by ear?
Ear.
Butt.
Dragon. Butt dragon.
Butt gator butt
Took the night off work. You done?
Oh. Yah. Dying my hair right now...
Wanna get a beer in a bit?
I'll be done in 30. Whaddya think?
Yep, I'm out, called out of pedicab in person.
Whur you at?
Going to Rain, actually :-)
Hahaha! Awesome.
Should I meet you there you wanna get a beer later or you wanna raincheck
Get the fuck down here! Come meet my friends!
Allmost done. Sorry.
Whenever. My phones almost dead. so if you can't find me in my grey megaphone tshirt, we've gone to Gingerman. It should last tho.
Ok, we are now at gingerman. Sorry for the miscue.
Wheresat again?
Btwn 3 and 4 on lavaca. We bullied the jukebox here the other night

This is just a slice of it all, those little thrills you get on a cardboard day from someone you like to hear from, coming every day, at any time, requesting one and receiving when you need it, being asked for one and dispensing, and building a conversation of text messages that lasts for months. It's a beautiful poetry in many ways, the navigation of interpersonal communication via texting. One must account for one's own subtext and any potential implied subtext, the degree of intimacy you have with the receiver of your texts, and how well she knows your personality to either infuse your words with the intonation you yourself desire, or know that the text is meant for her to interpret in the style of her particular personality, and know that she will. Then there's being so comfortable that none of this even matters. The rock, the shirt I feel comfortable wearing.

And yet, the very next day I let my imagination run wild about Violet. I had lunch with Miranda at Whole foods and my God, did she look beautiful. It was a sunny day, her haircut was actually fantastic, the dye job perfect for her, and I tried to take a picture, but she refused, embarrassed, and claimed she didn't look good in pictures. In my opinion, it is the embarrassed face that sours the picture, but I showed people her face in this half baked snapshot anyway, and told my friends in Boston all about her.

I planned on going back to Boston on the 15th of April since the trip started-I have a dental examination, and I knew I'd make some money riding 10 Red Sox games in a row, if I could obtain them. So without getting too elaborate right here, I had booked a return flight to Boston from LA, figuring I'd be done with my trip and I would need some cash to get started in LA. But what's happened has been what has happened, so I booked a flight from Austin to LA to catch my immutable Virgin America flight from LA to Boston, having altered my originating January 5th ticket to Austin, not LA from Boston. In the moment of mentioning the trip, Miranda told me she'd miss me, and so I asked her if she would give me a ride to the airport. She said she would, and it made her happy and I knew I could rely on her.

I left Miranda to do some census work in the middle of the day at Fletcher's and on the way home from it, there surfaced between Violet and I some kind of argument. I think I may have gotten too dramatic about something before dropping her off, I can't even remember what it was, and truly that means, especially now, that it didn't really matter. Probably something I said harshly, ascerbicly, thornily, a tendency I try to fight. I really wanted to see her and in messages, she is cool, all is controlled, but I begin to psych myself out. I talk to Chad's girlfriend sarah about my issues an her tactics for controlling my situation are nothing short of Machiavellian, and it turns into an ongoing discussion, and then later, an outright argument wearing the disguise of civility. I can't even take the stress of navigating the early loose or game-playing stages of relationships, and I freak out every time I start to invest. Being out later, I convinced myself that I saw Miranda in a club called Kiss and Fly, another gay bar in the warehouse district, and out of my mind, call her out on it. It ended up a happy accident since she thought it was funny and I confessed to her that I'm just totally mental that day, melting down, something she empathized with, genuinely cared to know why, and forgave me outright when I offered deep and crazy apologies, feeding back to me in a text, "Come to my bed motha fucka!" This is some chick.

Chad and Sarah started heading to Beauty Bar, a weakness he has for shitty hipster dance parties to music that sounds like insects fucking other insects that want to fight and/or kill them to eat them. I said I'd meet them over there, I had rode my bike, so they departed, and at that 1:15 am moment, as if my life is sometimes written by a bumbling screenwriter, Violet calls me as she said she would, and we talk. I apologized for being dramatic, and she thanks me for that. I call her out on the inconsistencies of her words versus her actions and she apologizes and I thank her for that. We talk openly and honestly and I tell her about how Sarah told me to proceed in my course, which I rejected and Violet rejects abhorrently, and we laugh about it because the air has been cleared. I'm on the level again, I have the peace I desire, and instead of traveling to a shitty hipster dance party, I pop into nearby Fado, an Irish pub that has a location I've imbibed at in Washington, DC. I speak to that old hospitable friend that is there for the sociable, the bartender, and he tells me the meaning of Fado, the Gaelic word that begins most Irish tales, meaning, "A long time ago." I burned the last of my night down in there, submerging my thoughts in Guinness and gab until ten after two, then biked to Miranda's. The word appearing to me now just seems so appropriate that at some point this entire chronicle will be fado, and here I write from memory 60 days after the fact. That distance is only due to grow as the journey picks up yet again in just 8 days from the present.

Sunday was the day we designated to film the Kramer versus Kramer scene, and Violet had been dumpster diving. She invited me to dine with her friends on salvaged goods, and I accepted, of course. We drove to her friend Sierra's place and the few ladies cooked dinner while I wrapped up a little census business while drinking a beer. Billable hours at dinner hanging out. Violet picked some wild onions she had found and made scallion pancakes out of them with sweet potato fries that came from the dumpster. One of her friends, a guy named Brad, apparently had an aversion to food that may not have come directly from a store, and the whole meal was shadowed by the fact of his not knowing. Before he arrived, we joked for 20 minutes about the best possible time and way to reveal to him that he'd been eating food from a dumpster. Hey Brad, you ever put your mouth directly on a garbage can? (Stops eating) I can NOT believe this food was all so fucking free! (stops eating) Isn't this delicious for dumpster food, Braaaad? (stops chewing) It particularly amused when he really enjoyed the meal and complimented the ladies on their creations. As Violet and I drove to the filming location for our scene, we kept laughing about it. The idea was to let him digest a good bit and enlighten him long after the meal so to spare his rage a little, but the cat had to exit the bag, and Violet texted him that he had something interesting in his stomach. As selfish as it may have been considering we were not the ones to deal with the aftermath of Brad's annoyance that we fed him such trashily procured foodstuffs, it helped pass our time between takes. The shoot itself went well, and acting with Violet thrilled us both to feel things in front of each other. I loved the exercise of it all, and I need a lot more film acting experience or far greater detail in direction, and more preparation. For my character, giving the camera little felt like the right thing to do, and I think the performance comes across as more loaded than flat, and Violet does a fine job in everything I've seen her act in. And inside this block of time, and this day together is where its sinking in that Violet fucking rules, and I'm passing the point of no return. In between takes, she texts me that I'm cute, and as nervous as I get overthinking things while we're apart, in her presence I'm not afraid to unleash my undomesticated dork, and let him run around the yard and chew up old boots. After we wrapped our shoot, Violet suggested her place as the venue change, and I accepted the invitation because I wanted it the whole time. It's a moment that cracks me wide open when you lay next to somebody, looking into their eyes for a while and just say, "Hi," and you smile, and they smile back, because you've gone so much further than greeting, and with bright eyes reflecting at you in any kind of light and say it back to you, "Hi." I don't care to greet just anyone like that, just every once in a while...you know you can. And so here it was, "Hi," and the next month it was "Oh, hello."

Violet and I planned for dinner that night, a real date sort of thing, so I polished up a few date ideas and had followed through with executing a more ritualistic time of courting her for whatever it was we were entertaining. I was ready to take her down to Saltlick Barbeque in wherever the fuck it was 35 minutes away is where, and the idea was sound, but Violet hadn't realized how much time needed to be budgeted for this excursion, and needed to be at her improv show at 8. So in haste, we went somewhere local, my disappointment known, but the dateness of it not being lost, and so after a delicious mess of ribs, we drove up to the Coldetowne Theater, and I sunk a little deeper into the Austin comedy scene. I watched damned good free improv and drank the beer I bought at the gas station there, and met a lot of Violet's contemporaries, great people, cool kids just having fun in this great scene, learning and laughing. It hurts a little not to grow the roots I want to grow here, but this is the way of the traveler I am, that sad cowboy that has to go into the sunset. We weathered the flurry of socializing that followed the show, and I as Violet's ride home, tried to give her the space to be just herself with her improv friends, but I struggled in that parking lot to be either funny to her friends, or failing that, not awkward, maybe just tired.

We went back South towards Violet's house and got some ice cream to wrap our little date. I did want to introduce Violet to Chad, and we popped in at the last moment of the last night he'd live in Austin, to introduce, say hello, say goodbye, and tape that package shut and ship it off. I disliked the appearance of Sarah and Violet in the same space, mostly due to the residue of the argument we had a few nights prior, but I knew I proceeded in the morally just method, and that it could not be extracted as incident from the stop in we made. So they met and were friendly, and everyone got tired, and we all left each other somberly and sleepily, and back to Violet's for the second night in a row, feeling assured to sleep next to her the night before I left.

I took off when Violet did, and went to pack my shit up for a month of tricycles. I handed my census badge in, and my only regret about working for the US Census, was that when I handed my badge in, I didn't say, "You can count me out." Miranda went to get her new tattoo before she planned to pick me up, so I waited at home for the ink to dry, ready to go. It became apparent to her that it was going to take longer than they had planned, and she wouldn't be able to give me a ride. She texted it to me. I got really upset with her, and started to panic. I waited just a little bit to see if it would work out or not, and lamented that I always have issues getting to this fucking airport! I relented to myself and texted Violet to ask for a ride. She indignantly came to get me, I think she felt hurt that I didn't ask her for the ride to the airport to begin with, in fact mentioning that I could have, but who should it have been anyway? Then again, words are easy to say.

She kissed me goodbye, and drove off. Then Miranda texted me that she was all done, did I still need a ride? We bittersweetly spoke over the phone, and confessed we'd miss each other, and that we'd stay in touch, and could just chat whenever just like we had been. I feared for my relationships in Austin, and how they would be affected by my month long absence. Nowhere and nothing else has made me realize the heartbreaking nature of nomadism, the burden that a transient traveler suffers, that your relationships can't be properly maintained, that you always have that loneliness to carry. It doesn't just exist in you, but on your back, tensing your shoulders as if to keep the frigid wind out of your jacket, shrugging out and off settled feelings. I had Saltlick Barbeque by myself at the airport, ate half of it in Austin, the second half in California. I tried to write in the sky and got a single paragraph out. I landed at LAX and texted Miranda first.

Statistics:

$223 in travel adjustments
Unlimited texting by the month
95 days from my last standup set to the day when I first went on twice in one evening
1 guy told me to suck his dick
4 total shifts riding a trailer pedicab
21 years ago was the end of the decade of music I prefer to dance to.
21 year olds and younger have no real appreciation for the 80's, fuckin babies. *shakes fist*
22 is Miranda's age
24 is Violet's age
6 is the optimal number of fist shakes when performing aforementioned action. Go ahead, try it.

Drinks from...

Day 86

483 Ranger IPA @home
484 Fin Du Monde
485 Ranger IPA

Day 87

486 PBR @Chad's
487 PBR
488 Tecate @Berto's
489 PBR
490 PBR
491 Rio Blanco Pale Ale @Boticelli's
492 Rio Blanco Pale Ale
493 Live Oak Wood Beast @Snack Bar
494 Lonestar @Continental Club

Day 88

495 Racer 5 IPA @Whip In
496 Live Oak IPA
497 Miller High Life @ Red Devil Shop

Day 89

498 Ranger IPA @home
499 Dogfish Head 60 min IPA
500 Miller High Life @Red Devil Shop

Day 90

501 Dogfish Head 60 min IPA @home
502 Ranger IPA @Violet's
503 Ranger IPA
504 Ranger IPA
505 Fin Du Monde @party
506 Miller High Life
507 Shiner Bock @Elysium
508 Miller High Life

Day 91

509 Stash IPA @Mellow Mushroom
510 Stash IPA
511 Mudslinger Ale @home
512 Lonestar

Day 92

513 512 IPA @Little Woodrow's
514 512 IPA
515 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA @home

Day 93

516 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA @home
517 Shiner Bock @Starseeds
518 Ranger IPA @New Movement
519 Ranger IPA
520 Ranger IPA
521 Live Oak IPA @Six Tap Room
522 Live Oak IPA
523 Ranger IPA @Ginger Man
524 Fireman's 4

Day 94

525 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA @Kari's
526 Widmer Pitch Black IPA
527 Schlitz 40 oz @New Movement
528 Brooklyn Lager @Long Branch Inn
529 Fireman's 4

Day 95

530 Lonestar @Red Devil Shop
531 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA @home
532 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA
533 Absithe @Peche
534 Shiner Bock @Rain
535 Shot of Patron
536 Ranger IPA @Ginger Man
537 Live Oak IPA

Day 96

538 St. Arnold's Bock @Whole Foods
539 Broken Halo IPA @ Fletcher's
540 Lonestar @home
541 Some Pilsner @The Good Knight
542 Stone IPA @Shangri-La (Thanks, Eric!)
543 Lonestar
544 Lonestar
545 Lonestar @Blind Pig
546 Jager shot (WHY?!?)
547 Shiner Bock @Kiss and Fly
548 Stash IPA @Frank
549 Guinness @Fado

Day 97

550 Ranger IPA @Little Woodrow's
551 512 IPA
552 Rio Blanco Full Moon Rye Pale Ale @Film Shoot
553 Lucky U IPA @Violet's
554 Lucky U IPA
556 Lucky U IPA

Day 98

557 Shiner Dark @Artz Ribhouse
558 Corona
559 Shiner Bock @Coldtowne Theater
560 Ranger IPA @Violet's

Day 99

561 Ranger IPA @home
562 Ranger IPA
Flight
563 Racer 5 IPA @Library Ale House
564 Lagunitas IPA @Finn McCool's
565 Lagunitas IPA
566 East India IPA @Fox and Hound
567 East India IPA
568 PBR 24 oz can at Maeve's Residuals

The Miranda Act

2010-05-14T17:27:00.001-07:00

Days 130-148

Miranda acted strangely the next day when we woke up at her apartment, her words came across distantly, and I pried out of her that she didn't feel comfortable remaining close to me after I had tried to end the intimate nature of our relationship. We did allow ourselves too much freedom to rely on each other to care while we were separated. I understood though, and I explained to her that I valued her friendship and I wanted to maintain this familiarity, the openness to communicate and express and trust one another to be there. She took some of it in, but I know it hurt her. She held coming in second over my head for the next month. Fair. I made a decision and I said some things I meant when I said them, and no matter how you spin it, I bet on Violet, not Miranda.

When I arrived at home and laid eyes on my beautiful car, I couldn't wait to start it. It sat right where I left it for a whole month, and the battery had run down, so when I opened the driver's side door (after unlocking the passenger side to unlock the driver's side), I squinted when my car refused to greet me with it's bi-tonal shriek, not one but two cats dying in monotone. My roommate Felipe, or "Negro" (Neh-grow, r is rolled) as he is nicknamed from his capoeira class, helped me jump start the sleeping beast, and the dash came alive. All systems nominal, excepting the fuel which leaked from a full tank of gas down to just over three quarters, an acceptable place for the gas tank to have a leak, and now a game I play when I visit the gas station: "How Much Gas is the Perfect Amount of Gas?" Another one of these pointless games I invent to play in otherwise dull moments. In these games, I look forward to the moment when I can say to myself, "Damn, I'm getting good at that!" The new top cloth had begun to sag since the glue I had purchased could not hold on in the blistering, amplified, Texas heat inside the Toyota Microwave. I sighed. The same project to be done once more. More than anything, I dislike repeating a one-time task that has already been done, and yet, I can cope with the mind numbing duties of temp work or repetition of brainless assembly, or taking the same ride to Fenway and having the same conversation thousands of times.

That night I went over to Violet's for a "pie party" that was happening for her friend's birthday. I had a perfectly nice time, and I felt comfortable showing Violet how glad I was to see her. I guess it turned out to be an error, or a tipping point, or something that flipped the scales, because after everyone left, Violet wanted to talk, and it wasn't about working for the government. I think I flipped her off switch with the confidence I had in being around her and how it was evident, though not overstated, that I really liked her. I'm certain that I wasn't over the top, played it pretty cool, but she saw to the roots and she had to make the right call for her. It's easy to blame a lot of factors or moments on an ultimate crash in any situation. Hell, if Hitler had only changed his strategy in one battle, perhaps the Jews might be eradicated and we'd all speak German, except not me, I probably wouldn't exist. But that's the game you can play ad nauseum. If I didn't do this or that, the thing I want, which is most certainly not systematic murder, might still be happening. I like to believe the let down I got from Violet issued nothing but the truth. I trusted her deeply, and our friendship pulled no punches of honesty, so even when a friend suggested that there might have been another man, and the thought of it hurt so badly when I allowed myself to get carried away with it, I clung to the directly perceived, level, unblinking-eyed words that Violet spoke to me. She said she loved me then, as she created the new law that I'd abide by to preserve the friendship. I told her I loved her too, not in the helpless I'm in love with you way, but in the reciprocal way where you really are impressed and love a person for their spirit, the way they exist, the random spikes of their responses to your random routes of remarks, and vice versa. But maybe it came out the other way, since when she wanted to end it, I simply said no. Cute, but not a valid argument. I'm ambivalent about the way I reacted to her that night. I fought for the person I wanted, but laid down so much power and went flimsy for her that I really don't feel that I acted like a proper man, but I said what I felt, and can't be entirely disappointed in being true to myself, carried away as I can get. I really wanted to hang on to her. I made a decision that I could postpone my itinerary and give Violet and me and shot, the time to see what happened, or finish my trip and go back like a heroic soldier returning to his dame from war. It crushed me that I got it wrong, and hurt someone to end up just as hurt. I crashed there on the small and uncomfortable couch unit that night, having believed I'd stay there to begin with in an expected return to the old occasional sequence, but ending up flatly despondent and too drunk to drive.

In the morning, we greeted each other with smiles, and I felt stupid for still being there, but when she reads this, it will be the first she really knows about it for sure, but I'm sure she sensed it. We still flirted and jabbed but the spark was smothered, the wet, burnt, dead end of a piece of kindling. A great deal of friendship still hung in the balance, so I don't use the previous description as all-encompassing, but specifically for that feeling of being dumped, or semi-dumped, or put in the friend zone, or maybe any let down is akin to that wet, burnt, dead end, it's sooty and robbed of evident worth. You know in the future, it can be useful, but you are forced to look upon it and wait, and curse the present. She told me she loved me again before I left, so I chewed on that one while I geared the Longshot up I-35..

Instead of being a total emo bitch, I vented a little to Nick, and he did tell me how much that sucks. I kind of loved not finding a full understanding of the totality of my circumstances, Nick just 21 years old and lacking many of the delightfully complex encounters I have collected as one slightly more experienced. His shortcomings in the capacity to offer me psychological deconstruction of my reality were compensated for by the ability and encouragement to be distracted. We went to get some exercise, a bike ride down to Zilker Park to throw the frisbee around, shirtless in the 90 degree air, the humidity populating the air with UV protection. I've spent several hours at a stretch without my shirt on there, never getting a sunburn, just nicely tanned. In Boston, about 20 minutes shirtless is enough to realize that I look like I belong in a James Hook lobster tank. We sat and had a beer in the park, hiding our public flouting of open container laws right before a park attendant golf carted by with a suspicious and stinky eye. We know when we're not welcome to drink in the open air anymore, so we rolled across the road to take a well deserved swim in Barton Springs. I have done more swimming in my three cumulative months in Austin than I think I've done in the last ten years combined, and I remembered how I loved swimming as a child. I bet my mom always had mixed feelings about taking me swimming because I'd never want to come out of the water. In addition to that revelation, this year I started doing more things that scared me. With the passing of years, a set of irrational fears have made their way in to my soul. Why should I be scared at all to jump off a diving board? Personal injury? I remember, perhaps selectively, that I was so adventurous as a child, jumping off a high dive board as if I were Luigi from Super Mario Bros 2, legs flailing all the way to the water, and repeating the jump until they dragged me kicking and screaming away from the pool. And now, to scare myself, I do a running jump off the board for distance. And then a flip. Wow, tough guy. I used to do backflips on my trampoline regularly. Side flips. Suicides. Now I can barely think about a back flip without staring uncomfortably off into space, pondering my failure of an attempt at one, and the pain my neck could suffer. But the little step of overcoming my hesitation to flip incited my desire to do more new things I've never done before, like hurtle down river rapids in a raft, or fire a gun at a tin can on a fence to feel like a cartoon cliche, or ride a horse fast, not at the lumbering pace of a mellow beast constrained to a kiddie corral and interminable counter clockwise circles for five dollar, five minute rides.

For all that ambition, I find myself back at 80's night on Sunday, with Miranda. She showers me with this astonishing sympathy that brings tears to my eyes in how large her capacity to feel really is. She says, "Poor guy," with this measure of extra depth in her voice that covers the difference between the feeling for my physical exhaustion after a pedicab shift, and understanding my emotional pain. Day to day we kept hanging out, and we went to 80's night again, this time alone together, no surprises or omissions, no embarrassment, just dancing to 80's music. We noticed a girl with a remarkable David Bowie tattoo on her back, hard to miss when she wears a backless whatever she wore, Miranda admired the scope of the art, all over that girl from shoulders to lower back. This time the music satisfied far better than the last time, and we danced a lot. I followed Miranda out to the deck while she smoked, and in my Boston Pedicab neon the magic happened again. There are tons of pedicab drivers there, a community of them that shows up in a veritable drove at this place or the next, and it's this place tonight, and I am, uh, spotted. The conversation ensues, and it occurs to me that wearing the color and the words really put me out there in the brotherhood. In any city, I can share that life experience with anyone who chooses to identify as a pedicabber with me. One pedicabber girl, easily three sheets or windier, insisted on finding me on Facebook, trading numbers, and being best buds. She later blushed for the mention of our encounter. We rode the same waves, we ended up in the same places, and the excitement of knowing one another subsided into a common friendship, sometimes just too busy on a ride to even say hi.

Communication with Violet stayed open, and we planned to build a high school science project style volcano for my show on Thursday for The Encyclopedia Show. The topic for this month's show was "Explosives" and I had been issued the subtopic of "Krakatoa" the volcano that is commonly believed to be the largest volcanic explosion in modern recorded history. I staked my hopes on that yet to be decided day before Thursday that some kind of rebound would come around. I'm such a fool when I get caught up in these things, the ideas I come up with are so blinded by faulty logic and made entirely of lottery tickets. Despite getting dumped, I lay my trust down like a bouquet on a gravestone, there to rot away until you forget. I guess some of it turns into loyalty; some of my favorite people and best female friends are people who I've been involved with, but I don't know how to feel about the foundation of the loyalty when I dig into the roots of it. Relatively speaking, I could also be a wittingly evil, single-serving, self-serving, unanimous prick, so I guess feelings transmuted into loyalty aren't that bad. Unless the feelings were for Stalin, or bin Laden. That's bad. I'm not them, and I do not have feelings for Stalin, not even if Stalin suddenly became an historically documented babe, so let's mark that one as a victory. My parents must be so proud that I'm not Stalin, and slightly disappointed that I'm not an historically documented babe, but that is not to say that I'm without the lessons of history and occasionally Machiavellian.

It got very easy hanging out with Miranda again and it even gained more of a resemblance to a relationship since, some time elapsed, the picture had become a good bit clearer from the triangle that once was. She seemed really positive about some things like laying down boundaries with her ex-boyfriend Stephen, and we let too much grow between us. We enacted our own monogamous law pertaining to our continued agreement to see each other, which I like to believe we both honored, yet knowing that I can only answer for myself. There was this new professionalism, and then sometimes she'd mention stuff like, "We are really different people, like fundamentally different," and I'd be drawn into a conversation about what I like about her, and would then suffer her suspicion for a while. I tried to keep the status simple and affirm that we should just enjoy hanging out while we still had the time, the current moment being what I tried to seize all year, but the attempt I made over the phone at breaking it off had wounded her and our bond permanently.

The show on Thursday had me stressing a little bit and I had written out a crude set of jokes about volcanoes in my email, but I needed a hard copy in my hand. I decided that I should visit my favorite clerk in all of Austin at the UPS store. Milena just has this expression like something crazy is always about to happen, and talking to her feels full of potential, like it is about to rain, or explode or just run five miles at a sprint, and this is why I print shit out here. I told her about the show and she agreed to attend, and I beamed a little bit right at her, holding a lot back, feeling shy around her and unaware that most of my looks at her came up under my eyebrows as if I didn't know what else to do but look at my shoes. Some seriously great flirting. I could die happy after a moment like that, I'd leave throwing my head back, looking up after having just buried my chin in my chest for a five minute conversation. It's all nothing, and it's all something, it never went anywhere, but it certainly lifted me up every time I had a piece of business to attend to. That girl coulda blinked at me right and got me to pay $70 for a copy, since that kinda thing is part and parcel to my fatal flaw.

Late on the night before the show, Violet made good on helping me produce a paper mache volcano. I went down to the HEB to acquire the materials for the prop, and also some beers and ingredients to compose some s'mores, because snacks were mandatory for any arts and crafts project. There is a ridiculous picture of me with s'more in my mouth, failing to enjoy or ingest properly, a long string of marshmallow trailing the sandwich, some of it stuck in my beard, the expression saying, "I need a dentist." The Ranger IPA does very well to compliment a s'more. Somewhere around 10 or 11 we really got going. The construction unfolded far easier than I expected it to. We used the cardboard from a Lonestar 30 rack as the funnel pyramid of the volcano, and for all I know it could have been the deed to Texas land by the rules of Lonestar's promotion at the time, and we enjoyed wasting it. How sad that would be since I've grown to love the idea of being a Texas land owner. Flour and water makes a good enough paper mache, and we even created a sort of craggy base around the volcano for a more authentic look, but in the process of painting the mess, I decided that it would be better if it just looked totally bush-league and had mismatched colors, because we ran out of paint with accurate looking volcano colors. We had a lot of fun. I mean I never have a bad time with Violet, but it was a little bit difficult to be with her since I felt a little bent on her. I don't think I showed it too much, and I am assured by how smooth everything felt. I tried to keep it just friendly, and I believe that I succeeded that night, but just like an irrational fool, I felt that somehow I had won points back and that I had the ability to put things back into romance. It's all education for me, I suppose, I suppose too much in control of things sometimes. The project got 95% done, only some painting touch up left, and I felt excited for the moment of use, even though Violet couldn't attend the show. I drove Violet home, using my new bike rack that I recently purchased up at "The Peddler" to tote her bike, and the goodbye had intense feelings dripping off it. We hugged really hard, and that's how she does, but I know the difference in the intent, and going into that hug I resolved to myself, "it's just a hug you're just friends, let it be," but she gave me this kiss on the cheek and I let rationale slip away. I came home to my roommate, the rock in his chair, watching True Blood or capoeira videos online, I can't remember. I'm sure I sounded stupidly hopeful to him, and he waxed impressed at how I could "bring it back again" like I brought it back before when Miranda and I were on the outs. Basking in my little fluttering mind, I remembered a few of the things I had previously done to impress Violet, and I really hoped she'd make it to the show and swoon because I expected to perform brilliantly. Brainwaves coming at low tide, an illusion of control.

The next day I ran all my errands, touched up the volcano, and did as much memorizing as possible, ultimately deciding that index cards were within the boundaries of my character, then writing up a series of them to use in the presentation. I put the last touches on my character, the lab coat Miranda procured for me, the name "Sandra" embroidered on the chest, a detail I twisted into the doctor's history: His ex-wife's lab coat, the last remaining vestige of their relationship, her absence now a soul crushing reminder of his shortcomings. I scored a pretty styling short sleeve white button down dress shirt and pug-ugly bowtie to round out the nerdy scientist character that I knew would be largely based on the voice of my former roommate turned raging prick/baby daddy/disgraced pedicabber/ne'er do-well Rob Lovett, aka Robbie Rekless, the fiscal equivalent of a black hole, a man so worthless that you'd think he was fictitious. For a wanna be rock-star, he sure did have a voice that would make a four year old giggle. I had aligned the finer points of his impression, and finally had a use for it that went beyond denigrating his deplorable human character. Worthless as a human, but he ultimately provided me with one more tool in the imaginary box of characters that grows in content over a lifetime of meeting weird people, the Mr Potato Head assembly game of weird characteristics that can be taken whole or mixed and matched into new personalities, the likes of which may pass over a stage and disappear forever.

Allow me to indulge in a side note on Robbie. My memory would love to repress the images he's branded into the everyday recall of files, but for all of the energy he took away, I'll always have that character to use. He's a bad memory, but he's a heck of a specimen, and at least for the hundreds of dollars lost and violated safety I felt in my own home, I'm here, moving forward, and above it with something that has some value to me. For all the money he got, he never got anything like satisfaction. I'm not a negative person in general, but this person so fully took advantage of my friendship, and it is hard not to be scarred by the rape of the good will and trust I once gave him. The use of his voice served me in a strange way as a sort of exorcism of his influences, his helpless, addictive existence. It is a little tragic; here's a guy who is capable at an instrument, charismatic, and has the intelligence to learn things, and yet he makes the negative choice nearly every time. He never otherwise applied himself, and never had someone impress upon him the meaning of consequences. His identity ran away from him, probably sometime around 17 or 18, maybe not set off by, but ushered along by the likely unintentional misspelling of "Rekless" being tattoo'd across his shoulders. Why do I believe it was unintentional? He's an atrocious speller, and one of my favorites, yet not the most egregiously faulted was "toylet" for toilet. These are the little accidents he never corrects, and instead embraces. The extra beer, the excess that puts him over the edge. The beer that is the gateway to cocaine or vomit, he will have it. There's a latent rage in this man that one day came out on his birthday, wielding a broken bottle planning to attack me for asking him for his late rent, or at a vending machine that sucked down 80 of his last cents while his baby is in gestation. Twenty-nine and in the past year, kicked out of his house, his job, his band, his practice space, and another band, and still with no sense to wrap it up, yet it looks unlikely that he'll ever stop thinking that he's on top of the world. And I've seen him about as low as he gets. The next whiskey I drink (he used to steal my good whiskey, too) will be for him, and the hope that someday he might construct and not destroy, and in hopes that he'll end up a good father, somehow. As for me, I cut the cancer out and framed the picture.

I took the whole project down to the performance space, The Independent Theater, and in one of those wise moments that have started happening in recent years, locked all my doors in front of the two vagrant gentlemen who flouted convention and drank their illicit alcohol in the open, without bags to mask the brand of beverage they consumed. I met a few folks, placed the prop, and took off to pick up Miranda. I revved up that stretch of I-35, never really sure until the last week I lived there whether I should take the top level or the bottom level of the highway, the monstrosity of a traffic solution only causes more problems than it solves. I took 38 1/2 street's rolling hills to those familiar turns and twists, the ones I used to have to GPS twice or thrice on my phone before I finally found the damn street I like to park on. I loved when Miranda stepped into my car, it felt like Goofy plopped down into a cardboard box, got taped up, and stamped for delivery to somewhere distant, too small a vehicle for her, and then suddenly this impressive woman sat there and unfailingly looked at me with nervous, familiar eyes. She had a way of not fitting into things with how much black she wore in hot Texas, how skinny, how tall, red hair gone kinda scraggly. Her mother gave her a beautiful haircut once and she started to freak out about the change. We went back down to the show, and Nick met us down there. Without warning, and despite my skepticism that it would happen, Milena shows up, and I am floored with this great problem I now have, one I didn't over think but took moment to moment, two girls bound to be jealous of each other by the end of the night, because what else would reasonably happen? Harmony? Not in my world.

I hastily start putting PBR's away in anxiety and preparation for the performance. I talk with a few other contributors about the show and their pieces, and their experiences here, and as tends to happen, I start getting a little over excited. I don't know how good I'll be, but I know that there's going to be a lot of energy in my set, and it amped me up even more that the house got packed out, standing room only by the time the show began. They slated me as the first contributor, with the prior knowledge that I'd make a mess with my Coca-Cola/Mentos volcano, and so I figured that there was no way I could get TOO drunk before going on. I even pre-set a shot of whiskey on the prop table for my bit. They introduced me as Dan Kerrigan, and with a small and slow stepping walk worthy of the voice I planned to produce, I awkwardly shook hands with the hosts. I looked lost on stage, and adjusted my microphone slowly, taking the time to slowly familiarize myself to them as Dr. Rich Magma, drawing them in to what I was doing. The presentation of the lengthy silences built the tension, and I sold the "nerd not used to being on stage" angle when I finally introduced myself. My bit boiled slowly, but after a few comparisons between Eyjafjallajokull and Krakatoa with a couple of timely and large projected visuals that I could refer to, I had people coming with me down my nerdy road. Portraying a geologist afforded me the opportunity to make jokes that missed on purpose, and after just a few of them, the crowd understood that they had to embrace it, I gave them no choice. Having established this foundation, I layered in some anger that he harbored towards his ex-wife, an explosive anger issue if you will, and if you won't, I did, so don't even bother not. I'm not claiming that it stood among my best performances ever, but it went very well indeed, some jokes hit particularly hard, like the one where I translated Eyjafjallajokull from Icelandic to mean, "I will fuck you then I will kill you." Once I mentioned demonstrations and unveiled the paper machier volcano that had been heretofore hidden, I got some pretty excited applause. I scooped a handful of flour and blew a cloud of it into the air, in comparison to Eyjafjallajokull. Then I took a shot of whiskey to cheers, since alcoholism seemed to be an easy attribute to solder onto the good geologist, or failing that, it came with Robbie's voice, then dropped a few Mentos into a 2-liter bottle of Coke which then spouted five seconds worth of Coca Cola. Rage ensued and I lashed out at the volcano for its failure, its embodiment of the life Rich Magma now leads, and after collecting myself told the audience, "Well. I planned for this. Fortunately, I brought...these fireworks!" This is when my planned exit was staged as the hosts interrupted me before it got "too dangerous".

Celebrating was easy, I had like four Shiner Bocks at the bar, bought Milena a drink for suffering the fate of the standing room crowd, and I wanted to show her my appreciation for coming out. It strikes me that "showing my appreciation" might represent a formidable euphamism that I can use in the future when I utter phrases that disgusting men do. There's a time and a place, so ask me sometime in some place. Anyhow, the rest of the show was a bang up! Contributors referenced phrases like "Da bomb" and one talented writer did a hilarious piece on the Large Hadron Collider to close the show. I did try to have a discussion with her later, but she seemed rather uninterested in the fact that I also involved myself in a writing process, but I let it roll of my back, the ways things do for me in my Austin-influenced personality. Here where I write in Boston, from almost a hundred days out of these events, I can barely watch two North Shore floozies who couldn't drive home to Salem last night for lack of sobriety order a dozen breakfast donuts without dropping my head onto the Dunkin' Donuts counter structure saying, "I just want a fucking Coolata." Seriously, like 30 seconds. In Austin, I'd watch a whole light cycle run and not beep at the idiot fondling his phone or penis in front of me who didn't see the color change, I just wasn't in that big of a hurry, and didn't feel so instantly annoyed, and things were just fine that way. Now I'm ordering fucking Coolatas! What have I come to? Anyway, the show was a huge success and I had a few friends there to support me, and it got taped, so I'll supposedly have the evidence of this in the future. "The Encyclopedia Show: Austin" recently has been awarded by a critic's pick for Best of Austin in entertainment. I'm so residually proud.

So the four of us, Miranda, Milena, Nick, and I took a walk to go have some follow up drinks, of course. I picked Shangri-La as our destination, my favorite establishment in Austin. I think that place has it all, although I've seen a lot of great bars over the trip, but it had what we all needed: Outdoor seating where Miranda could smoke, indoor pool tables, video games, music, and Stone IPA bottles or PBR tall boys. We all played pool, and I shot poorly, warning them all that I'd go on a run at some point, it always happens, and like the called shot, I hit my streak. It's usually no better than three in a row, but it was four this time including the 8-ball to finish the game. One of those nights where I just caught on fire. When Miranda went outside to burn a smoke, Nick joined her, leaving Milena and I alone. I had a golden opportunity to play Mortal Kombat II, a game with a character named Mileena, with a girl named Milena, I'm such a huge nerd that I could not pass this up, but basically if she weren't there, I couldn't even pass up playing Mortal Kombat II in that bar, ever. I don't think that I missed an opportunity to play that game on any visit I made to Shangri-La. Milena got the irony and knew about the character and actually selected her, and that delighted me. For how quiet she seemed while confined behind her UPS countertop and restrained by her casual uniform, she really opened up into a talkative girl. Perhaps the alcohol loosened her, but when I mentioned it, she told me with a grin, "You don't know me very well, do you?" She grilled me on who Miranda was to me, even though the truth of it was evident, and flirted anyway. Back to four again, we played more pool and then came to consensus to find a new place to go, and walked West towards "Dirty 6th". Milena went home, I think she got really turned off by my apparent involvement with Miranda, and didn't want to be that wedge. We kissed goodbye, but going forward, I didn't have the cred to get her to hang out again after that, no manner of texts or friendly stop-ins to obtain hard copies of documents could lure her, not that I made those efforts. She just didn't want to put herself in that mess with sexual tension on the line. Miranda sensed it before Milena even left and got really mad at me for flirting, and accused me of trying to not hang out with her. I explained that I made no active choices to go away or not be near her, and as a matter of fact, the four of us were playing pool, so I vocally wondered if I should come out to share every cigarette with her. I quelled her suspicions straight away, and after all there was no doubt between us that we were going to be together at the end of the night, that simple and sometimes beautiful, trusting, and maybe asinine assumption. We reached a settlement, but she photographed and filed this night for another go. I don't think she was wrong to, I certainly backpedaled far enough.

We were down to an awkward three, and agreed on Casino El Camino, if my memory serves me right, because Miranda really liked that place. More beer and some fries were brought around, and because of the rift, or the organic way that our parties had interacted separately in two pairs for a majority of the previous bar time, I surreptitiously censured Nick for getting aggressively flirty with Miranda. He had been spending most of the night with her and Nick, while single, acts flirtatious with nearly all females, so when they signal back to him, he'll lay into it hard. I said, "Dude, take it easy, are you trying to kill this on me? I barely have a grip on it at all," thinking about how it really only just came back to life, and in those words realizing my emotions had gotten involved in what she and I had. Damn me one more time. Nick's a fantastic dude, I do see some of myself in him, and I knew he attempted to restrain himself, but succumbed to his own inclinations for a while. "IIII- just can't help myself," he admitted. I love this guy.

When the night wrapped, Miranda asked me if we were walking back to my car, but I declined to drive due to intoxication. We grabbed a cab, and Miranda got extremely excited about the ride-she had never been in a cab in her life! Nothing eventful happened while riding in the cab, a run of the mill, get you home safely cab ride. I set my alarm for her since she had to be up early to cover a co-worker's shift at Starbucks the next morning.

When my alarm went off, I gave Miranda shoves and woke her up. She didn't get right up and crawled back into unconsciousness. So by the time she opened her eyes again, she was late. Logistically speaking, she had a snowball's chance in hell of getting out of this one easy. She whined in utter frustration and fear for her job, shamed at everything about the moment: Why had she offered to cover this of all shifts, why didn't she bring her phone, why didn't I wake her up, will she get fired? The horror set in. The night before, while migrating from the show to the bar, I had moved my car a few blocks down from the theater, a desolate side street, lit up a little, but not desolate, and locked it up there. I left the faceplate on my stereo. Miranda left her bag in the car. Ironically we required a cab, once more, to take us to my car. This friendly cab driver bantered with us and offered many jokes and small stories in our short ride, mentioning one woman who worked her whole career, and after buying her dream home just died because she had been texting while driving and never saw the danger coming. The tragedy of it hurt him and the tale of the fragility of life really put Miranda's moment in perspective, though it didn't soothe her conscience. I paid the man, and stepped out of the cab to find that my car had been broken into.

It looked like a routine job, the rear window smashed out so the thief didn't have to sit on glass while he extracted my stereo. That thing that Mike and I painstakingly installed over the sound of my screaming, dying cat-door ajar alert, gone. He really fucked up the dash while doing it, how inconsiderate. Also he took Miranda's bag, a bonus, a few bucks and a phone. So we all had a very nice start to this day, indeed. The good came when the very guy she intended to cover the shift for called my phone to tell her that he could make it in after all. Close call, but egg on the face, for sure. To me, for Miranda's sake, my car being broken into seemed more like a gift of an excuse for her predicament than anything else. I tried to spin it into a positive for her, the stroke of bad luck, her reason for tardiness gone from the hands of personal responsibility and liability to simple untimely misfortune. I introduced her to the way I run my PR disaster program, and with the lucky sequence that played out for her, helped steer her into the relative clear. Ah yes, an old lesson, point the blame.

I was kinda bullshit about losing a stereo. After driving Miranda home so she could take care of Jag, I went directly to Best Buy to shop for a new stereo, and basically got the same exact one. I couldn't stare at the hideous state of my dash like that for long, so replacement was mandatory, and I had no patience to do it again, on my own, so I paid the grunt-geeks there to do it. I think I acted foolishly simply because I had not yet replaced the GLASS. There was even less there than before to stop an inclined robber from taking a new stereo out of my dipshit vehicle. No glass, just a plastic garbage bag jerry-rigged on with some packing tape that ultimately melted to the body and other glass pieces. Several times I asked myself while locking my car, "Why am I locking my car?" And for no reason I continued to lock my plastic bag transporter, and unlock it with the same ridiculous crawl-across process that I always do, although a few times I really felt tempted to break into my own car through the polymer window. The Best Buy boys did a magnificent job, got all my speakers to work, even hot glued my dash into a better aesthetic than before, form fitting the brown encasing around the stereo where it had protruded before the incident. Money well spent, money I now had to replace by triking. The job turned into preserving my account balance as of May 13th, which I now find terribly shortsighted.

I actually looked forward to working this first weekend back in Austin since I had been afforded the opportunity to ride a trike instead of a trailer for the same company that I almost quit because they didn't have trikes. The company owner debuted his Main Street brand "Broadway" bikes, which seat three, are geared low, and were maintained poorly. The new additions, ten of them, were hard to maintain since the mechanic there had never really worked with them. I suppose acclimating yourself to pedicab repair happens on a steep learning curve without adequate instruction. The first night I rode one, I felt so much more comfortable to be free of balance, but had four separate gears that malfunctioned. It turned into an atypical memory game. Here's a high pressure situation where you're pedaling three people up a hill, now what gears can you use to actually make it to the top without breaking the chain? You will be rewarded with money if you succeed, good luck. I put up respectable numbers that weekend, and managed to recover the cost of my stereo and glass installations, the retail therapy I needed for my trauma, and moderate living expenses. It seemed as though I was going to have an easy time keeping even with the score I made in Boston and I thought maybe I'd even produce some extra.

Before going out to pedicab, I went to meet Violet for dinner at a place she recommended several days before, Blue Dahlia. I think she had reservations about hanging out after Wednesday night, we were confusing each other. At that point, I wasn't thinking very clearly and so any time I could spend with her amounted to a good thing for me. She asked if it would be cool if one of her friends could come so I said, "Sure, why not," but quietly felt the inner sting of disappointment. So when we met up, I received the surprise that her friend got a flat tire and wouldn't be able to make it. That actually took a lot of stress off of my mind, because I felt like I didn't have to impress someone that I didn't know, didn't have to show them why Violet thinks I'm cool. The two of us sat down to a creative meal, and the table we were issued was tucked away in the back corner of the restaurant's outdoor courtyard, a small waterfall and garden in full view, and possibly the best table in the house. Nnnnot the best table for two people who are trying to put it in the friend zone, but that didn't occur to me nor was it my intention since we received it randomly off the wait list, it was the first time I ever laid eyes on this place. We enjoyed ourselves the same way we had done for the previous month of time, well-built conversations with clever, witty turns, flirts built into the structure, long laughter with stupid pauses of looking at each other smiling during the recovery of breath. For every hour I had with Miranda, I'd trade for half an hour with Violet, like dollars to pounds, but all currency goes bust, a metaphor for the memory I'll abandon as an old or dead man. To me, that's the greatest tragedy we have, that the entirety of our catalogue of memories disappears when we die. On the way out, I unlocked my pedicab from itself and offered Violet a ride around. She climbed in and I drove her on a two-minute long ride of swerves and doughnuts and the biggest bursts of speed I could show her inside of 100 yards, listening to her girlishly squeal, "Wheeeeeee," for every sudden turn I took. She stepped off the cab and I dismounted, and I wished her goodbye, feeling a little too enamored of our time together this night. It helped me to work hard that night, I remember some of the difficult rides I took up large hills, but it didn't matter if things seemed good with Violet.

The next time we spoke, she sounded frustrated that it too much resembled a date, and expressed her thoughts that we might need a little time off from seeing each other to let the feelings play out. I said to her, "Well I think we should hang out while we still have time."
"We have our whole lives to be friends," she optimistically countered.
I imagined her smile when she came up with this argument because I'm sure its invention pleased her in its cleverness and rectitude. I conceded in that discussion. It kept hitting me hard when I thought about when just over a month prior to that she said to me, "I kept thinking of cool things to do and then thinking, 'I bet Dan would want to go!'"

Miranda didn't mind the first few times I came over extremely late after my shift ended, I guess it signaled to me that this kind of continued behavior would be OK with her. She kept such strange sleeping hours between the dog that chews anything up and school and Starbucks that when I got done with work at 3:30 am, it became typical that she would wake up and just hang out, it felt amazing to have the perfect compliment to my schedule. I usually brought beer there, and if I hadn't, she had some. I remember seeing her carrying a 30 pack of Lonestar the night we first hung out at her place having an 80's dance party, and I thought, "They make 'em a little different around here." I'd let myself in to her place, entering into the stale bread and dog scent around 4 am and she'd either wake up or be up and we'd stay up and drink beer and talk about shit. One time she demanded that she cook for me. I'd still be operating on that post pedicab shift mile a minute pace, breaking down some of my more interesting rides, letting it all filter out to relax. One of those moments hit me where some component of my guarded heart unlocked a little more, and I blurted out to her that I loved that she stays up and hangs out with me when I get back so damned late, and it strikes me as tragically ironic that we saw each other all that time and we completely missed on really liking each other simultaneously.

My off time and even some of my on time flitted away through writing sessions, and watching the Boston Celtics. I began a ritual of going to Austin Java to have infinite refills on my iced coffee, which I most certainly abused, and writing until I received communication about an event or activity that would force me to begrudgingly quit the process and be sociable. Frequently I'd be at Whole Foods watching some insured fool chase the birds out of the store, since the temperature inside welcomed winged beasts in from the heat through sliding automatic doors, and a lady would clap at the birds to scare them out, succeeding, then failing in retreating from the intermittent egress as they'd fly back in. I'd grapple with my desire to write knowing this environment choked out my focus, and produce only a few paragraphs before shifting only three blocks down the street to Little Woodrow's where Boston games were proudly broadcast, and the early week specials in combination with the desire to watch the Olde Towne teams enouraged my continued patronage. I couldn't stop running into this fuckin' guy Paul Sweeney, a Boston guy and also a writer as his card and ego stated who could not shut the fuck up about himself. It became a primary question in my mind when I set out for Little Woodrow's, "Is that fuckin' guy gonna be there?" Fortunately, I only ran into him three excruciating times, but the encounters were so powerfully annoying, that I'd pay twice as much for a beer somewhere else without the game to avoid him, but then again, I do sometimes gamble. I don't know what he wrote. He told me once, but really bored me in his attempts to overbond with me through television and movie references and asking me if I've read this and that. I felt inclined to tell him once that I am barely literate and lied about coming from Boston. Still, I attended the establishment, even when I had to work, responsibly only having one beer until the Celtics beat the Magic, or as I had been calling them at the time, "The Orlando Charlatan Trickery," and then I'd go stack up some paper.

Just like I used to do in 2005 when I had money and nothing to do at times, I went out alone to meet people and grasp at the straws of trouble, see if I came up lucky. I showed up at 80's night at Elysium alone one night. Maybe Nick had joined me, but really it didn't matter because wherever we went together just the two of us, we'd end up operating alone and meeting up to check in at the end or saluting the other in an exit, glorified or disgraced, whichever it may be. Finally I went up to talk to her, this girl with long dreads and an elaborate David Bowie tattoo that Miranda once drooled over, the whole scene composed from Labrynth, set into her skin. Fundamental commonalities were already set in place, so all I had to do in my mind was dance adequately, something I'm not sure I'm capable of, yet continue to make the effort of accomplishing. I didn't fail, apparently, and a little bit of conversation passed between us as we danced closer, revealing that we both love Boston, the
Celtics, and 80's music a whole lot. I got her number under the auspices that we'd meet up for the Celtics game on Thursday, the next round against the Cavs set to begin a few days off. I breathed that sigh of refreshment and dissociation that helps me drop the things I hold on to, the things I'd been trying to bury, but a few short breaths never do it, and nobody disappears in ten differently combined digits, or a two-mile uphill bike ride, or in 8 hours of sleep. Nobody good, anyways.

The moments of my everyday life had ceased to be inane. I did some research on the necessary replacement of my window glass, and found a location that would perform the task on the cheap. While waiting for the installation to be completed, I met a gentleman there who, like nearly everyone I meet in Texas, chooses to be friendly, and we commiserated over the shattering of our glass, and the likes of where we travel. He took a lot of trips to Arizona and St. Louis to meet up with fellow owners of what I recall to be Mazda Miatas. My opinions of the Miata model aside, everybody wants to find something they identify with and so this brotherhood belonged to him, and we kicked back and talked about auto glass, man. I enjoyed myself in that dingy waiting room, sharing our humanity and the victimization we suffered by random chance of an errant pebble kicked from a semi or purse-snatching stereo thief. One hundred and thirty five dollars later I drove off the lot with an idea to tattoo that window with a piece of art to commemorate my trip, and thought in this way I could contract Violet's help for the cause, but it would never get done in Texas, and as much as she said she liked the idea, she didn't really want to help.

I have had a pretty hard time dealing with the aftermath of these two relationships fizzling or popping or gassing out air like a an untied balloon, the leftover rubber flopping to the ground with a "plip". The feeling is day dependent. I held onto whatever I had left in Miranda since Violet wanted the space, and nothing I devised struck me as worthy of breaking the non-communication necessity. I helplessly panned over the chat function on Facebook to see if she came online, and even so, couldn't stagger my desire to talk to her every time I viewed her name. My writing sessions turned into an hour or two of looking at facebook, repeatedly popping that window up and then allowing my frustration at all things to eliminate all distractions until I could only pour words out. In what I rationalized to be the moral interest of preserving a friendship with Violet, I wracked my imagination for reasonable moments or reasons for us to interact, and stifled them all, crushing them with the words she said to me, and believing in the high road and patience for her to change her attitude of her own volition. Ron Jones came to me like a floating head, remarking on my desire to contact my former girlfriend Meghan, "Just leave her alone, and maybe one day she'll say, "You know, I haven't talked to Dan in a while.'" Not exactly proactive, but not exactly wrong either. I'm proud of the control I exhibited to myself, but it was a monster in a thick cardboard box, mauling it from the inside, only dying if you don't feed it, and I fed it just enough to keep it alive and thrashing until I got to Portland. In representing her through these words and chapters, I don't want it to be lost that I made a decision in favor of her, and that has not left me. I thought the things we created together were so beautiful and funny and the well of those things so full and deep that any single, genuinely elated moment could be instantly discarded in favor of moving forward to the next one, soap bubbles. It's hard to pass judgements on anybody but yourself, not to mention when your expectations of a person can be so loaded and subject to flux.

I went down to meet Miranda on the Town Lake walk, she took her dog Jag down there for some exercise, so I met her up. She almost still couldn't believe she continued to see me, but the walk went on, and the ice broke again, like we hit reset every few days. We went all the way down to Zilker and turned around to pop into Flipnotics to have a beverage to just cool off. Flipnotics allows dogs on their porch, and sitting there, a girl came up to us and gave him a pan of water, which instantly embarrassed Miranda for her failure to realize that he might be thirsty. The embarrassment transformed into offense and she asked me if that girl did that to send a message to her. The next ten minutes of her Shiner Bock and my orange soda went by in my calming explanation to her that the gesture was surely innocent, but she could not let it go. I stayed patient with her, it was the bipolar or the borderline. A moment like this got her riled up in Waterloo records one time when a guy made some useless greeting comment to her while she smoked, and her second encounter with him turned into one where she wanted to bitch him out. That first one at Waterloo confused me and I looked at that guy like I didn't know what the hell she was talking about, but talked her down as we crossed Lamar. These passing comments had a way of turning into big messages for her, a sign that some people are just really fucked up and that the trivialities of everyday life were wrought with intent, frequently for insult and sexistly charged. I just had to support her on her most stable levels and try and ground her out when the polygraph went crazy. She fought internally about whether she should stay on her medication, whether she wanted to handle her challenges like an adult, and meet them naturally, or suffer the crushing lows of being numbed by her meds, times that would send her to the closet, or into mania sometimes when she didn't, but often when she did drink with them. Her psychiatrist signaled disappointment in not calling Miranda back, and she had days of incredible control and others of incredible self-destruction and loathing, and fear that nobody would help her. And in this speed and volatility, so did her attitude towards our relationship flip, and I'd talk to her about it, and she'd come around again on the back side and be intense with me. She booty called me some times and demand "to be all up ons." and would be ravenous for me, and the next day be tender yet disappointed. Day and night. We took these drives to something that felt like nowhere because she just wanted to drive, and we hiked up to a view of some antenna towers and water and a bridge, and outdoors, we went crazy over it and the people we heard across the bridge on the opposite cliff could undeniably hear her screams.

It got alternately intimate and tumultuous like this. Sometimes Miranda cooked for me, something she loved to do, but could never really focus the effort on, and her budget limited her to those Starbucks take-aways that the corporation forfeited for health reasons at their one day limit. We did things that boyfriends and girlfriends do. One day she gave me one of those cute little pop quizzes that she liked to issue where she says, "You know what I've always wanted to do," and waited with Christmas morning anticipation for me to pull it out of her with a return question. This time she said that she wanted to go kayaking. She got sad sometimes over how she used to be a runner and now she smokes and isn't very active, so this idea lit me up, so we planned a day to get out on the water. She had a hard time believing that I'd commit to it and periodically reminded me that I didn't have to go if I didn't want to, but asked if we were still going every two days for the week up to the event of it. Her insecure questions were so cute that they made me feel so sorry I was going to leave the town.

When we went, it was only warm, and drizzled a little from time to time, grey skies until we started our return trip, the two of us in our own individual kayak. I had not done anything like this since I attended Boyscout camp, and everything I had settled into got challenged in Austin by little activities like this. She rolled out of her plastic ship into Town Lake and screamed for the cold shock she gave herself. I stayed afloat in mine, just taking a break-I hadn't used my upper body so vigorously in a long time and so I rested my inferior shoulder muscles, happy and full to look around and to the coast as she had her dip. I remember particularly enjoying watching her struggle back into her seafaring vehicle, her long limbs almost capsizing the thing, and sliding her long legs into the position to continue, dripping wet and nervously laughing for her appearance when she triumphed. Just seeing her in her bikini, her lanky, pale body in the daylight, floating in front of me anywhere from 2 feet away to 100 yards ahead was a tremendous tease. Every once in a while we passed each other slowly and would cautiously kiss across our two kayaks, fearing that our desires could capsize us, and laughing when it ended because we survived and also looked like some kind of bad movie. Without a doubt they were some of the more romantic kisses I think I have ever shared. The mental images of them are in my vault.

We paddled a few miles down to "Dogpark Island" where people bring their dogs to poop and run and swim. Water flowed on both sides of the island, and in approach I had a Deliverance moment thinking one way would be a serene journey, while the other might bring me to death. Instead of dying, we made a positive choice and settled to share a beer that Miranda smuggled downstream in her bag. We chatted with a few folks and met their dogs, and in so doing I discovered that I really love the sight of dogs swimming. They look simultaneously happy and exasperated, so eager to chase the thing they know they can retrieve from the water, and with success, snorting in such imperiled anger at the interference of the very thing in regular breathing function. Then they do it again. Some with purpose, some with leisure, but all snorting and struggling to please their masters. One dog made the best snorting sound as he fetched a ball from the water, angry at the water still in his way, bobbing his head as if he were grooving to some house music, and so ready to do it again. There came a poor little pug with a life jacket looking like a homely toddler with a swimmie bottled around its neck. He went in after a ball and repeated task doing its pathetic, slanted, aquatic running-man swim back to shore, snoring and snorting, when its mission was accomplished. It made me want to buy a Hallmark Card and say "Awwwwwwww!" Like I like to do, I asked the owner what the pug's name was, but I've forgotten. It's a little bit of a back-handed people studying hobby of mine to see what folks name their pugs, just to know how they project their personalities onto the little sausage-link dogs, and if it fits the personality of a pug, which it usually does. We finished the beer and struggled back into the kayaks, beer now on the brain. The current favored the weak and lazy on our way back, and weakened and lazy, we stopped frequently to lie back in our vessels, observe the turtles sun-bathing on protruding sticks, or look down at aged trees, their trunks stretching ten feet down. Or kissing, there was more of that.

Naturally I'm back at Miranda's later on in the evening, and we walked to a neighborhood bar, nice and empty on a Thursday. I egotistically considered that Miranda being with a weird, but generally sweet guy like me might be drawing her out of her unhealthy patterns a little. I have said it before, but I marveled at her strength, and then when she would call me out, I feared that she'd very soon outgrow me, yet I blind my foresight and the clarity that blips in sometimes is easy to change the channel on. We went back to her place and watched some 30 Rock on DVD and let our hands feel their way into our awkward inebriated sex, full of effort from each as per the typical standard, though the potential for effortless, frantic ecstasy is there because we've gone there, so we hoped that it will grip us this time, but no. I have such a headache after about 2 hours of drunknap and I'm red eyed clawing at invisible relief with a mind trick I learned in a showing of Blue Man Group, but the trick is on me, and I loathed rising from the twin bed, timid to wake Miranda, if my snoring hasn't already once or thrice, but I do and I kick my toes forward to the convenience store. I remember a piece of lingerie discarded in the middle of the street, and I ponder for a moment who it belonged to. Is Miranda such a mess that she loses things blocks away from her? The bra is too small, and I walk back by it after cursing the deaths of the cells in my head and the slicing pain, it feels like someone is trying to mash sensitive clay back into one brain piece. I enter my vehicle, the only consolation I have is that I'm no longer moving my body, and get relief from a store that is just opening. When I returned, it took about 30 more minutes of lying there, and crawling back next to my tall sleeping companion, she asked me what was wrong, and took that beautiful sympathy out and poured it on me in sleepy tones. A few soothing hours later, she left for school; passing her class looks more and more possible every time she makes it to ACC on time. I slept there until one. She trusted me that much, and what would I steal anyway? I took comfort in that trust, just one more little thing, and walked Jag for her. I stopped even telling her I did this for her, I felt like it played too fawning, as if I needed to win points, not realizing I could have used a few extra points.

I took to hanging out in the Whole Foods a lot more often than I really ought to have, drinking kombucha regularly, unwitting of its alcohol content. I'd realize later on that they had pulled a certain manufacture of the stuff for the unregulated content of the constantly fermenting beverage. I'd eat, and write, and watch Breaking Bad over ninja video, now sadly defunct, and eat two tacos for five dollars, a diet rich in nutrients and savings, coffee on one side of me, the costly probiotic on the other. I pretended like I'd get a writing session in, but I peered around the seating areas hoping to be distracted by conversation, a Whole Foods employee running around clapping at a blackbird like usual, or some other beautiful occurrence with blonde hair and some manner of Longhorns apparel letting me know that she's probably 19, and I'd shake my head, steal a brownie, and watch my show about crystal meth. Accomplished author, I. I later discovered that these workers set to chase away the birds at the three sun exposed entrances to the store, these $27 an hour plus benefits, were LESS costly than the health hazard those stupid shitting blackbirds posed, eating away the Mediteranean quinoa salad and shitting in the kale. Multiple locations, I'd wager. Sure is some system we have here in this country, others potentially suing for the millions of fake dollars we've created based on the idea of debt, allowing for three people to make a living greeting strangers, waving a flag on a wire, and clapping at birds.

I'd alternate these prosperous hours with sessions at Austin Java, the bottomless iced coffees designed for me specifically, the side of vegetables my so-called breakfast, or lunch, or dinner, cheap, local, cheap, and filling. The amount of caffeine I became capable of housing in my body might frighten doctors, and cause heart attacks in lab rats, but I read somewhere that it wards off diabetes, a study that has dubious origins and one which I am ready and willing to blindly endorse. At Austin Java, I captained my legal-speedfreak mind into productivity, jittery with liquid and little to eat, ingesting only when famished, but arriving at self-satisfaction by the time something else-a swim, a frisbee toss in the park, a drink came up. Goodbye to the staff I know, see you soon! It's so nice to be embraced as a writer by others and fosters the very thing I say I practice.

There have been along the way a series of repetitions in my life. Meeting people again, bringing them back into my life, the series of names that occurs and then reoccurs. Re-acquainting with people, and the strands of cosmic entanglement inexorably brushing my face and my ass. Craig, the victim of the best cockblocking job I've ever done (or at least the most recent one), the one in New Orleans, finds my facebook post about being in Austin, and the jig is up. He knows I'm there. I have mixed feelings, but I don't try to stuff the cat back into the bag, I think, this is a person that I should give a good chance. He invited me over to his place for a "Maki Party". I think, "Oh, party. Multiple people will be there, perhaps a new network will develop from this." Because this is how I sometimes think, a kind of socially oriented utilitarianism . I can't say that a random Scientology pamphlet I once read didn't affect me in any way, because I did open my mind to the idea that people who are dangerous personalities are people that are not worthy of your time because they may only pose a danger to you. Then you can figure in that I really like crazy women, so I haven't really taken up the Scientologist principles. The fact also remains that I understand it is a work of fiction that has been remarkably manipulated, and though I know this has potential to offend, I've also learned many a good lesson that I've clearly ignored from other broadly manipulated fictitious works. These thought bubbles pop up when going through the brief decision process of the cut-list: Does this person have a value set that is good for me? Are you someone that I mesh well with creatively? Can you run the 40 fast enough? Should I attend your maki party? First impressions firmly in place, I failed to acquire a partner to make the foray into Craig's friendship, so I forged on alone to his "Maki Party" at his apartment, hell I got hungry. After small searching, I found his poorly marked apartment, not normally a problem, but in a dark and sketchy neighborhood, the answer to the question, "Whatchu doin down here so late," will not be well met with, "I'm having sushi at this guy's house who I met in New Orleans, he's having a maki party...Oh, here's my wallet."

I arrived and locked my bike up out back, and entered a house that seemed to have a dark cloud in it. Her name was Lindsey. She had not yet gotten home, but I got the sense that her arrival would only be tolerated and not well-received. She lived there. I later found out that Craig knew her from some other time and that Craig had basically arranged a cheap or free living situation with her, so tolerance was the least that could be extended to her in relation to the way she behaved. The sushi had not yet been finished, and things were almost all together, and once the meal reached completion, we waited for her. She entered in a piss mood. When I first came in, I met her boyfriend who played Wii with Craig and when I saw that this guy doted on this girl, I felt instantly bad for him. Firstly, she proceeded to exclaim that she needed to be drunk, and then we sat down for food. She ate about two or three pieces of sushi and then quit. Craig's Australian girlfriend Alexia, who came across loudly and had sarcasm like a murderous ice pick, acted offended enough for everybody until Lindsey had really no refuge but intoxication. Maki yes, but no party, this. Lindsey complained about anything and made it a joy to continue hanging out, so territorial of the space that she might as well have scattered her urine on everything. When she resigned to her room for a while, Craig and Alexia told me about how badly she treated her dog, Buddy. Not only did she confine him to the house and fail to exercise the poor sausage, she turned jealous that Craig and Alexia took it upon themselves to help the dog and run him around, and play with him. I liked their subtle retribution for her inhumanity of only calling the dog "The Bud" while Lindsey was elsewhere, trying to retrain him to only respond to "The Bud" and not Buddy, and thereby turning him ignorant of any of Lindsey's commands. I hope it worked.

Exiting the scene, I ran into a girl that I pegged for a memory without an acquaintance. I biked down East 6th and saw a pedicab driver on a pink trike. We might have greeted each other in passing out on a shift, but when I first got to Austin and unwittingly took my car to "Austin's Best" Yost Automotive, they went beyond fixing my car, they gave me the number of the company that the girl who babysits for them works for. I didn't know if it would work out, me working for a company named "Dikes on Bikes" but the sentiment was not lost on me. There went the shadowy archetype or the ambiguous description of this girl Carrie I'd heard of and who I'd been suggested to contact, yet never did. I greeted her and introduced the conversation of coincidence. Through intermittent encounters on pedicab and stunted conversations peppered with, "Y'all want a ride somewhere," we formed a quick friendship and so planned for some following off-day to hit the Green Belt in my first experience there. A few other pedicab folk joined, one of which I became buddies with, and some guy that we started secretly referring to as "Fishy Pete", a fisherman who worked seasonally to bank big, and lived bohemian otherwise, a guy with whom she ended up getting sucked into a relationship that had "Doomed" written all over it. The invisible document of doom, official in cyberspace, "It's Complicated" implied in its invention, "Let's be friends," omitted entirely from the terms and conditions of default.

So overstimulated, my Thursday ritual comes on that I go have a few beers on the Social Ride down in the park, take up the ride for a short time, and then peel off for my standup engagement at the Thursday open mic at the New Movement. I'd hit or miss, and more hits than misses were stacking my way these times, and either catch the rest of the ride, or since it was the playoffs, I did find myself with eyes cocked skyward at a small television to feel the perks and daggers of an intense Celtics playoff game. It's at these times that I find myself smarter than live action play, but many take the reins as a barstool coach when committed to a team. I went to meet Monika, the Bowie tattoo'd babe, and her friend Frank, the future successor to my place in the Maple Avenue castle, at Miranda's preferred Casino El Camino. Monika claimed it to be her jam, and a great place to view the game. A place to view it indeed, but for me a "great" place to watch a game immerses me in the experience of the game audio and hosts similarly impassioned people who share my view, or at least abhor it. Casino El Camino merely has the game on and drinks are cheap for Monika. Fair play to her, my ulterior motives broke through on later game days to get my way at Little Woodrow's, so who am I to complain? Monika tapped away at her laptop, trying to multitask her work into her social life, and impressively accomplishing the feat, at the expense of fully observing the Orlando Magic suffering inglorious defeat. This evening also offered me my first chance at getting on the mic at The Velveeta Room after posting on several cycles of their message board to obtain a simple 3 minute spot, so I played this balancing act game. The Velveeta room rests three or four doors East of the Casino, so I politicked like a community organizer running for senate. Halftime check in, post game check in, still not on, OK, fine, fine. Then let's go to Barbarella, I've never been.

There's lots of kids populating this dance-centric hipsterfest, and before you furrow your brow, or roll an eyeball or ankle or pant leg up at the mention of hipsters, I'll remind you that this is Austin, home of the well meaning, good-natured hipster. Barbarella is a place I've only seen pop up on my Gowalla application, basically like Foursquare, but started in Austin, and possibly more meaningless. Whatever, I downloaded it in Florida, and made a friend out of it by adding strangers at this social cycling event. I get these little Gowalla push notifications from my iphone when this random girl Kerissa, aforementioned random add, checks in here, and so here she is, this mysterious Kerissa who I have never seen, and only messaged since we are technologically savvy and frequent the same circles. Barbarella is like her favorite place in the world and I see her checking in there nearly every day, just like I'm sure she's learning that me and Shangri-La get along like Jews and bagels. Meanwhile, Monika is dancing with some stranger and I could care less, and I'm ordering PBR after PBR, a High Life to mix it up, you know, and using my phone to connect to a present stranger. Here we are, sending messages through this app, trying to identify each other, the blindness of finding one another in this dually smoky and steamy place coming as kind of a thrill, until we actually meet. We're suddenly face to face and I'm happy because the mystery is over and she probably couldn't have been more different than the vision I imagined (mostly way shorter), but she seems more visibly nonplussed than I. I walk away from the little encounter and just love that technology does this; we might have met on bicycles with a natural ease, a primal bike fetish facilitating the engagement of discussion, but the vast electronic fields of information have destroyed the magic of the introduction, and so we traded numbers in a friendly ritual so we can both miss opportunities to meet up in the future. A soft-sold goodbye forever from both of us, and I turned to fetch Monika and sell her on coming to my 3 minute set that will run right up against last call. She bites and Frank balks, but I'm psyched now, feeling liquid, loose, danced out, bolstered by a decent set earlier, hilarious questions of identity solved, and now somebody to impress while being on stage.

We hopped back to The Velveeta Room and sat down with one more boozer each, and upon my turn put up three and a half minutes of intensity. The consistent practice helped me interact with a finger on the crowd's pulse and I really just slayed the persistent, late hanging, respectful crowd with a succinct assault of silliness and physicality. It's a theme I'd started to learn, but this time, the liver really delivered the performance, too drunk to sit down, too beered up not to be funny, that pinnacle drunkeness that has you firing on all cylinders, noticing it all, the kind where without looking, you know who is behind by the way they breathe. Monika spoke complimentarily to me, impressed at my performance while I piloted down from the post-successful set high. For those three something little minutes and the many minutes that followed between then and unconsciousness, I'm on top of the world in a small little liberal island in Texas. Monika suggests we "wrap this night right, over at the Jackalope," and of course I'm down, and being so down and on the spot laid a concrete foundation for the two of us as friends, smart, quick, sociable and adventurous enough at one point to embark on a drunken blind search for "Hidden Beach" at 4 AM. Wow, Austin is a fun place, and you can just pick a person out of a hat, I swear. At least that's the way it felt for me then, and from what I know it is how it exists at present, but I've not read the future in my crystal ball lately.

Oh, the recovery I required for some of these days. I'll trade half a day in recovery, or even half a day off my lifespan for highs like those, but it all goes on the scale. Regardless of karma, the one side sees you pile up all your vices and misdeeds to yourself and your body, the destructions you wring this living vessel through, the other side hopefully not tipped too high up holds your good attitude, your health-conscious diet, and your exercise routine. So a tricycle is under many of my recent recoveries, working the sweat out, the skin saluting the toxins as they flee the scene. One good ride works up the clarity of endorphins and caffeine shaking hands, another "zone" I find myself in from time to time. Back to work it is, and I began to carve habits out of the routine of triking Austin. A quick stop at the beer store before the old pedicab check-out at 9:30 pm, one thing or another not being properly appropriate for the trike, but rolling it out anyway with my nose turned up a little East Coastily, and getting the "your lights are out" scoff from other drivers. What can I really do about my battery dying and the lights being out all night? Take another ride is what.

Speaking generally, anywhere I pedicab, more than being anything else, I am a witness to the scene. I've seen douche fights, chick fights, ejections, rejections, erections being satisfied, urinations of all varieties, puking, fucking, car crashes, I've seen the Celtics winning the Finals, The Red Sox playing the World Series, Phish heads huffing Nitrous on Brookline Ave, The Rolling Stones on Lansdowne St, Michael Ian Black in Copley Square, Adam Sandler in the back seat of my pedicab, Bill Clinton exiting the Park Plaza, Gwar walking down the street looking 8 feet tall, a guy in a cowboy hat with a Bluetooth headset, and dumb people being busted for dumb shit like drinking beer in your car while parked in a bus lane. I was just trying to get paid.

It's a hell of a job, and Austin makes it special again. It seemed to me that there is enough for everybody out there working, considering the money you need to live in Austin is diminutive compared to what you need to survive in Boston, and I feel like that resulted in community between drivers. That isn't to say that drama excused itself from class, there were petty differences, small rifts of style, but for all the jokers out there, it went pretty easily. I know I came across a little more intense than is typical there, or even necessary, but that's my inner Jew after the money, or alternately, my inner Mick "not fucking around." After a hard night of work, little traditions revealed themselves to me, the frequent shift from the Red Devil shop around the corner to the Dirtnail shop, owned by an acquaintance of Miranda's and sort of friend of her supposed ex. They are always fully stocked with beer for a pittance, the fair dollar for cans and two bucks for bottles, a nationwide standard in obtaining beer from other pedicabbers. Nights like this could run very late indeed, and certainly didn't help my case with Miranda when I'd continuously roll in at these hours, all something she agreed to, but veering progressively closer to acquiescence than the former open invitation that stood. The next morning would rise and she'd ask me again why I liked her, and bring up how different we are, and let fester the smallness of a three-week old spoken thing that never raised an eyebrow at first blush. The communication got tumultuous, and splattered on this canvas was the brilliance of a volatile relationship with that terminal tag that you only see from the outside. "DOOMED"

Friday night, really quite a solid night for me until Miranda texted me a question that I knew was being induced by an intensely depressive and thoughtful moment. It contained a latent existentialism to it and came to me as something like, "If you are just leaving and we're so different, why are we even staying together?" From wanting me as the rock to this. I called her instantly. I said things like, "What kind of question is this to ask me? To text me? I can't believe you want to put this on me while you know I'm at work." I reasoned and maybe rationalized, and put my side of the case down beyond the offense I took to how she wanted to handle it with a text. It seemed like it got worked out, but I knew the mood she put herself in, the existential kind. Is she the type of person that allows herself to get involved with a person like me, or under a set of circumstances like this, or any far reaching and broadsided set of givens that she had at her disposal to complete a sentence that begins with, "Am I the type of person that..." Answering "no" was winning. Weirdly enough, my next ride gave me $40, I scored $8 to go downhill, and ran directly into Violet, and our chat reinvigorated my admiration for her, as subdued as it had to be, and reminded her that I'm worth keeping around for kicks, I guess, since later she kicked back my volley that we had limited time to hang out, so in my opinion, she shouldn't hang me up, and so she wouldn't. After the 2am to 3:30 am "Power Hour" of pedicabbing, wherein I offered stranded drunks rides to a place where they can eliminate their wait time for a taxi cab by my guarantee, I took that late night ride through UT. My eventual presence at Miranda's apartment gave me the false sense of security that she merely victimized me in a flare up of a freak out. We laughed and lounged and drank and fucked like crossing a day off a calendar. We come around in the twin bed, try again, kiss off, see ya next time.

Then Saturday, I check my phone to see if I've received something from the only person who cares about whether I see a Cowboy with a Bluetooth, or a collie with a mohawk, or any trifling thing, and I read "Come to my house, fea, and convince me not to break it off with you." I tipped my head and thought, here we go again, another phone call, another cliff to talk her off of. She answered the phone and I could smell the booze through the phone. Nothing I said melted the ice. I told her I'd be there, but I couldn't just leave work, I'd be... She cut me off with, "Yeah yeah, I know it's gonna be late 'bout 4 o'clock. Seeya then." Click. She sobered up by the time I arrived and we chatted and watched 30 Rock and played like little kids figuring new things out, again. Breakup sex. So good, so poisoned.

My attitude had been to harness the now-ness of everything, and I knew that my life works best when I embody that philosophy, but in taking it on, it took me too long to realize that doing so closed my eyes to the instances when people agree in words but not in action. The sight of trajectory becomes hazy. It made me ignorant, and in losing the intimacy that I began to draw in and internalize, I looked for ways to consider how I could control the situation, how I could blame myself or attribute the failings to something, anything I did. Not so, I'm not so important. In these Texan months of heat, feeling clean in my sweaty shirt sticking to my beaded back, fit as a brand new F-1, fed to fulfillment, sharp as I can get, responding better than I ever had to pressure, feeling nearly self-actualized, I got a pretty big hard-on for myself, and I needed that change in attitude. I needed to remember that I'm in control and can push myself to these places. I went back to church to worship my God, myself, and found the love and peace of knowing God, but also forgot that to love my God, to paraphrase my Oma, is to place my family my friends in the same high esteem as I place myself. These people in front of me that deserve the treatment that I myself have boundless appreciation for, an unrequited hospitality that could break your bank but fortify beyond wars the bonds of friendship and love. It takes practice and experience to worship so selflessly.

The next night, I just didn't feel right. I made the decision to work a Sunday night based on previous years in Boston where I went to work almost uncontested in the entire city. By logic, I thought that nobody would ride a Sunday night thinking there might be another weekend night sewn into Memorial Day eve. I had no rhythm. My intuition led me astray, my hunches proved fruitless, my movements put me on the other side of the road from every ride I needed. Any rides I took that I thought might put me in my groove only frustrated me more when I lingered in a spot for 40 minutes without work. I even felt empowered and awesome by some girl asking me from my number and the moment she stepped off the cab, I exhaled this confident relief that it'd be OK, cheer up, chico, but just deep in me a hideous doubt bubbled in me. I texted Miranda and she didn't get back to me, and that felt fishy. I convinced myself that she and Stephen were back on, and went mad thinking about it out on the streets. I distracted myself by texting other people, anybody about whatever, thinking about drinking beer after the shift, purchasing that beer, but the vision would not subside. I coolly sent the line, "I'm not feeling it tonight, you wanna hang out? I'm heading in right now," but what I really felt roared from my gut, "Catch her in it!" I prepared myself for something truly ugly, and thinking about how ugly it could get made it more hideous for me to think about. It was marvelously clear to me how much I'd come to care for and trust Miranda and I couldn't stand the thought of betrayal. The moment is not lost on me and how it is a far cry from the me of 2005-2007, prevaricating piece of shit, deserved the worst betrayal myself for my misdeeds, the only positive coming from the turning point it became when I got dumped. Karmic fuck yous. I made directly for the shop, my head floating way out in a field somewhere holding a shotgun to a scarecrow to get over the thing happening back in the home. I drank one down, a Ranger IPA, got in my whip and possessed with this emotion that was the gunpowder for rage, uncontrollable suspicion that only needed a spark. I think a different alignment of those events might have made me scream so loud that I'd never have a voice to speak with ever again. I'm not exaggerating. Halfway there, she called. I pulled right the fuck over. I took a mammoth inhale before accepting the call, and softly placed my greeting.
"Hey," I said.
"Hey."
"Are you fucking Steven again?"
"No."
"I'm sorry, I don't know what's wrong with me right now, I've had the worst night. Are you at home? I really want to see you."
"No, I'm at a friend's."
Hearing that just drove me further into that wasteland of charcoal-smoke filled suspicion, I knew about most of the people she hung out with. 66% of them were me and Steven.
"I'm really sorry, I feel completely out of control."
"We need to talk."

The breakup went like this: She said she didn't want to see me anymore, she didn't feel it was healthy. I countered with the now-ness of it. She reiterated, and cited instances that she felt were disrespectful that I attempted to debunk them as a fully qualified example. She rephrased, and in just hearing her rational and reasonable, I calmed, and accepted, and told her I never meant to show her any disrespect and to prove it, I'd abide by her determination and that I still wanted to be friends. She didn't know if that would be possible for her. I told her I was hurt, but I'd leave her alone. The dead air was sweet and felt like a million people were listening to a DJ choke on the air. Way back, she told me a story about how she had summed up a meeting with one phrase and the people with her looked at her like a three headed pig-man, and so at this very end, she said with a sudden enthusiasm for the joke of it and its dually timely and tacky placement, "Welp...it's been real!" We laughed pretty hard at that one. The phone clicked off on her end and I dropped my arm and felt a despondent relief, and cried somewhere in the back neighborhoods East of I-35, and drove home so I could go down to 6th and medicate with some randoms. All of the effort the rest of that night stabbed at numb bits, worthless, demonstrating the base nature of my fellow degenerates. I met up with that girl who wanted my number and then texted me, and felt repulsed. I popped into the Trophy Room alone to look at an inoperative mechanical bull and drink a $3 Lonestar. What a disgrace, my misplays, my hubris, my moments of poor self-control, if only this or that, one more and no more thoughts, but I didn't want to dance, and I could hardly thrust forth a word, so beer went in and in and in until my ass got ushered to the street at 2:10 am. I felt worse than I did all year.

Miranda was really done and there would be no bringing it back. We spoke a few times afterwards, but it sprang from desperate invention and genuinely suffered rejection, and was apparent as such. She quit responding. She didn't have to say anything to me ever again. She never has to pick up the phone when I call. She has the right to remain silent.

STATISTICS:

76 days from meeting Miranda to the break up.
$143 to replace my stereo.
$138 to replace my window.
35 or so minutes spent cynically following Monika around a dark forest looking for "Hidden Beach"
6 games for the Celtics to dispel the Orlando Magic
2 Number of days a week I typically worked in my last month in Austin.

Materials purchased for 6-8 minute bit:

Flour
Baseboard
Crayola paints
Scissors
Paint Brush
Graham Crackers
Marshmallows
Hershey's Chocolate
Lonestar Beer (previously)
White Short Sleeve Dress Shirt
Bowtie
Coca Cola
Mentos
Safety Goggles

DRINKS FROM...

Suspended until July, loss of phone, story forthcoming.

17 days of Austin left, and back on the road.

Hello, My Name is Dan, I Work for the U.S. Census...May I Approach?

2010-05-14T15:52:00.000-07:00

Day 77-85

The human body tells you things when it absolutely must. Stuff like, "That fire hurts, better take your hand out of it," or, "You have to poop soon or else you will suffer great shame and embarassment," and, "it's time to take a break on the drinking, I'm about to die." It is good to listen to your body when it communicates with you. On Monday, I did little but catch up on some great TV and drink kombucha in the hopes of inducing some detoxification, knowing I need one of a little more comprehensive strategy and duration. It was a day where I muddled my way through everyday thoughts that by this point in my life should be second nature. I experienced an inside-outness that made me a pants-pooping danger to myself, feeling like the singed edges of a patch of hair, the smell, the stickiness morphing into a feeling, so much more whole than a mere hangover.

Even the next day, after trying to jump start my whole human engine system with massive amounts of caffeine at Austin Java, forcing the words to flow through my fingers, I still felt like a wet matchcbook. Meeting up with Miranda that night, I could only get one Lonestar down. Poor fucking baby, right? I listened, I put down the drink and just knew I couldn't make the rebound quite yet. While the SXSW hangover persisted, and the funds I had were dwindling dangerously, the stroke of fortune smacks me on the ass and says "attaboy" once again when the US Census Bureau called me this day to offer me a temporary job. I took the test to work for the census about four weeks prior to this phone call, back when my itinerary was vastly different from the one that my complex, adaptive travel schedule has become. I expected that I'd be hired immediately for a few short weeks of intense work before I'd make an ultimate exit from Austin on a rigorous two week schedule halfway up plus halfway across the rest of the states. The need to slow and settle got the best of me and the ability to potentially exploit the cost of living in Texas tempted me too greatly, so when the census called me, I accepted the job that started paying me to train the following day. I had been thinking that I could recuperate a lot of money between Austin pedicabbing and the census in the following three weeks, until the day where I'd go back East for family visitation, an oral checkup, and an expected pedicab marathon of ten lucrative Red Sox games straight in a row. I was half right, but what I didn't make up in money was overcompensated by Irish-Jewish luck. I don't know what's up with the things that happen to me, maybe I've got mad karma points like Jim Kramer's got mad money. Maybe it's built up from the Famine and the Holocaust, or maybe serendipity is setting me up for a heart rending ending. I like to think it's not the latter.

Before I begin to describe the transpirations of working for U.S. Census Bureau, I need all you to understand that I will have to obscure certain details in the name of the law that could imprison me for 72 years or something for revealing Personally Identifiable Information about people who have taken the census or even people who have worked for the census and have processed its information, operated under, or closely under the guidelines that have been standardized for these government operations. But free speech does not prohibit me from criticizing these things, or saying, "Suck it, Census!" Hahaaahhhh....take that, government that I helped!

I went to training the next morning at the place where I took the test in the first place, we may even have been in the same room where I felt embarrassed by my inability to answer every question correctly. I felt like I was taking a smaller SAT test and I couldn't believe I got one wrong and knew that if I showed my dad the score, he'd ask me why I didn't get a perfect score, or wouldn't believe that the one I missed was a math question. I believe I may have some residual high school performance insecurities. I got in a couple of minutes late-I could not for the life of me retrace my steps to the test location, though I had the recall to get almost all the way there. If it wasn't for that little spelling error of "Friedrich" as "Frederick" on my iphone, I'd have made it on time. Upon walking into the room, I looked around and saw my name written on a card in front of a chair. I glanced at the other faces to see who my census contemporaries would be, and it seemed a regular old lot of folks, young to old, all of whom I'd grow to understand a whole lot more about in short time. The training session began led by a late thirties dude named...let's call him Fletcher. From the outset, I had a good feeling about the way things would proceed. He was clear, took what the manual said with a grain of salt, and didn't hesitate to interject with how he felt about the things he was teaching to us, at one point explicitly mentioning that he is a socialist. He let the way the class was learning and conversing dictate the pace of the class, and this encouraged in we the trainees a confidence in him and aided everyone to learn faster. I later discovered that certain other classes could not complete the training in the three eight hour work days alotted for it, and subsequently felt impressed and emboldened by how efficiently, yet thoroughly I knew the information versus other groups with different crew leaders. Of note, other crew leaders were canned for sucking at their jobs. None of this matters too much. Nothing lasts forever, especially U.S. Census jobs.

About 20 minutes after the first day of training began, a latecomer arrived. Everybody turned to look at the new person entering. She greeted the room, apologized for being late and introduces herself as...let's say...Violet. She said she was late because she was biking, though no real excuse despite the damp morning, but I'm actually stricken by her frazzled entrance. Maybe it looked familiar to many experiences I've navigated. I focused, but I wanted to talk to her. We got a break and while people took care of whatever it is they needed to do, I struck up a conversation with Violet about bikes. I have something fairly interesting to say since I recently was nearly run over by a motor vehicle and bought a helmet. The conversation was friendly, though brief, and interrupted by class resuming. Just fine, it's $17 an hour after all.

Later on, lunch is about to occur, and Violet doesn't have all her documents to get her properly paid by the U.S. government, and it's a bad idea to allow that to happen since the work necessary to follow up on the back end is kind of circuitous and littered with red tape, you'd better just get it right the first fuckin' time lest you curse yourself for not getting it done the first fuckin' time, because it is after that time passes that one becomes fucked and scorns the past times as "fuckin' times". Right before lunch, the particulars of how she will procure the appropriate documents from her home are being hashed out and it comes out that I have a car. She serves, "I'll buy you lunch if you can give me a ride back to my place," I return, "How bout I give you a ride to your place and you DON'T buy me lunch." She lets the ball bounce past her, giving me the point saying, "OK." She thinks my car is "neat" and I like that and feel validated because I'm emotionally attached to it now.

It's apparent that we are in a similar age range and we are both smart and have similar sensibilities after spending the next hour talking about ourselves to each other and coming to know we have a great deal of common ground as people, but this is all business, friendly coworkers here, perhaps something of a friendship is potentially available. To tell you the truth, which I've been doing all along and strangely haven't yet used that very expression, I'm impressed with Violet the individual. She's quick, clever and thoughtful and intelligent, an improviser, an artist, owns this energy around her, is classically beautiful, and we are having a little difficulty not laughing too hard at what the other is saying. We made contacts out of each other to discuss potential carpooling. I couldn't keep too much focus after lunch, but fortunately the process of learning the protocol of U.S. government business is riddled with redundancies. Riddled with redundancies. Riddled with redundancies. Bureaucracies sure do know how to turn four man hours out of two.

The second day of training proceeded in a different location. I'm early, so unlike me to be more than punctual, but I'm beginning to realize that the government gave me a sweet pig to fuck, all I have to do is hold the tail up. I that stretching a dirty metaphor too much for an opening sentence? My filter has disintegrated since I've left the East, my East coast friends might agree that I've come a little more unglued than the old 1st grade Elmer's pasta picture I used to be. I desire to start this sentence here with, "So this pig fucker..." but I'll only reveal the thought and refrain from practice. The seating arrangements have been shuffled, and our names are in certain positions so I sit next to people I had not the day before. Behind me is a girl who is austere, but emits a quiet cool that I feel like winning over by getting her to smile. It's a slow business trying to crack jokes to the presence behind me in a subversive and incendiary fashion without tipping too many others off to the fact that I'm not paying attention. I get caught out once or twice for my lack of focus, but everyone understands that it's early and they've observed what a cracked-out caffeine hound I am, so I get a pass and others do too when they suffer the same moment.

Lunch comes our way again, and I pointedly asked Violet if she'd like to join me. She accepted and we go back in my car to The Triangle, a spot full of restaurants and shops and offices, and apartments where two major streets in Austin converge. I have The Galaxy Cafe in mind, they do a pretty solid lunch, but everyone else who works in the area has already parked and we struggle for a spot. I mentioned that I have this handicapped parking pass that used to belong to my grandmother, until she got one with more current expiry dates. I say I use it in emergencies, and after about 10 minutes of dwindling lunch time searching for parking, a few K-turns and a discussion about the impropriety of abusing the benefits of such a parking pass, we both rationalized its current necessity, hang it on the mirror, and go eat. So she's not over-principled. Points. Don't get me wrong, I'm not keeping track of points at this stage, and nor am I that obsessive and/or compulsive in paying such close attention or maintaining a point system for the people I meet, but I write in retrospect and remembering this moment is dually embarrassing to admit about my character, but revealing of her character as I explore the development of what came to be. And whatever, my mom fucking does it all the time. But if anyone should ever be offered preferred parking for no good reason, it should be my mom.

When I got back to my place, I discovered that the last of my documents to obtain my pedicab license has arrived. I jump up and down about it, and then I freaked out, realizing that the next day is the last day that all of my documents are concurrently valid. I find it a reason to text Violet to ask her for Fletcher's number, but end up finding it myself and implored him for no more than an hour and a half to go get my license to pedicab in Austin, employing the excuse that allowing the day to pass won't just cost me the $25 of procuring the first document again for validity's sake, but the potential $500 I'd make pedicabbing this weekend, and the argument is quite convincing.

Victorious in negotiations, I went out on another social ride without anyone to hang with. It was boring, I felt like people had walls up and they didn't want to be too social at all, not with anyone they didn't know. I rode along anyway and stayed up a little too late chasing ghosts of potential friends on bikes and into bars, knowing I'd have to hoist myself out of the sack the next day and zombie through some real important activities.

I got up anxious and excited at the C of D to be right outside the licensing office in order to be the first guy dealt with. It's cold, and I danced around like I had to pee. The doors open and I warmed up still waiting for the office I need to open. It happens, I go in, and we filed papers, baby! Then they hit me with the test. A multiple choice exam that intimidated me and I sweated getting the 14 questions right that I needed to pass. I took way too long to finish. I could have been at training a lot faster, but I felt my fate in Austin hinging on this test. While plotting out how many I potentially got wrong, and second guessing certain answers, Violet texted me that Fletcher said I should bring donuts. I love it, and plan to abide. I turned in my test to get graded an A minus. Only two wrong. I gave a good look for my license photo, and looked up donut shops that were on my way.

I stroll into class with donuts in my arms, a coffee also in one hand, knowing I'm going to be the five-minute hero, the kid whose mom made cupcakes for everyone in his class on his birthday. Nobody else knew I was prompted, so they figured that I was just trying to be cool and all were thankful, and Violet was amused that I followed through, not to mention that Fletcher was slightly won over and ended up letting me keep the pay for the 1.25 government training hours I had missed out on. Bonus. Donuts that pay for themselves!

We talked more about PII and the jokes about our government process flowed fairly freely in class. One guy in the room is a very large UT student with a proportionately large sized mouth that lets disproportionately awkward jokes fly out into our classroom air, a dangerous air that threads propriety and serious government business with a self-effacing understanding of asinine rote processes. He makes certain jokes several times as if we didn't get them the first time, second time, or third. He clearly thinks he is smarter than everyone else, but also desires to be funnier than everyone. It annoys. "Burns my ass" is the expression that comes to mind. When his jokes or statements flop it spawns this visceral disgust, a deep embarrassment, the feeling of a barely viscous grime on the skin, for essentially no reason at all. It is winning when on the third day of training, he unleashes his "Captain Redundancy Redundancy" joke for the 5th or 6th time, and Violet volleys with a sentence that starts strong and deliberately trails off with disjointed timing, and is so loaded and full of passive venom and buckshot that it took him down a few pegs, saying, "I like how you keep...saying that." The training class which spans from 18 year old UT students to Vietnam vets, with young pro's and crusty hippies in between erupts on it because it was just a matter of shooting it out of the air, and Violet smashed it. It delivered him a strong message that I like to think stung him like lake water on a flopping belly, "We know you're telling a joke and it's not funny." I later tell her I particularly appreciated that sentence, and we laugh so hard all over again and trash talk our associate, and in that we inch closer. Later during actual Census operations our colleague, despite his first impression, turned out a capable and sufficiently affable guy, perhaps out of discovering his place in a team, a professional world where he surrenders control to superiors, and where conceited attitudes are reviled, but perhaps it was just one sentence that gave him a pretty good head check. So suddenly I'm a Violet fan.

Bored in class, I friend Violet and text her that I've done so. She accepts and we start checking each other out online and revealing lots of PII to each other. The day ends and I'm hashing things out with Flether about the earlier hours and after we wrap our little meeting at the trunk of his car, Violet asks me if I can give her and her bike a ride home. I'm happy to, and we go down towards her place and as we go, it's vaguely clear that we've progressed into flirtatious territory. I feel like I'm running out of time to seize on that, so I suggest grabbing lunch and a beer to wrap up our training, and it's a good suggestion. We sit down over at the Snack Bar, near enough to her place, and have a fun little lunch, a few chuckles, they fuck up my order but I don't stress about it, and we chop the check in two. I reassembled her bike from out of my back seat and I suggested a toss of the frisbee the next day and some studying of our government protocol over coffee, or something to that effect and we establish tentative plans to even potentially sing karaoke later and head off on our ways. She bailed, but I shrugged it off and went out for some East Side beverages with this girl Dawn I had made a connection with at the Red Devil shop. No mind, no matter, nothing great to say about her, she came out and told me she was wearing a wig for fun. Okey Dokey, don't call me, I'll call you.

I started writing the next day at home, editing my business, even though you might think I don't edit my work. The early afternoon frisbee thing didn't look like it was going to pan out, but adaptive plans developed. Violet was off working at a glass shop, making bottles and such while I crafted words, so we agreed to let our creative selves burn out and meet up to leave our right minds for census land, a place filled with payment forms to file, people as numbers, and super secret dealings that often surprisingly occur in full view of the public. We aimed to convene at this elusive taco truck that is not reliably open during its posted business hours, and second to arrive, we changed course for Torchy's Tacos. The menu has tacos that have names. Of note are two tacos that are entitled "The Democrat" and "The Republican," which I ordered for irony and called it "The Bi-Partisan". She appreciated how I ordered for comedic value. She liked my bike, which I had just gotten back the day before with it's hot new wheel and fork since the SUV incident. We rolled up South 1st for coffee and sat outside to review our handbooks and manuals, but it was monotonous stuff and we much preferred the new pleasure of entertaining each other. The books shut. She talked passionately of her art, I mirrored that energy regarding my blog, this very thing, and we wanted to know more. She invited me to her place, and I was about ready for a beer, so we agreed that we would call it the four hours of government mandated necessary studying time that we were tasked to do, and went to drink beers at her place while talking about art and writing. This, for $17 an hour, and I was still better prepared to operate than others trained for longer. I'm proud to be an American.

The nature of our relationship already toed the illicit border line since fraternization should not progress beyond strict professionalism. I later received a warning from SmAsher that it was necessary for us to keep it friendly, and I played the awareness card, of course! I told him we were just developing into good friends with a great deal of common interests and are in the same age bracket, which is funny because a bracket, by nature, holds whatever you define it to; books, NCAA basketball teams, income, and let's just say the ages of 24-28. Perfect! What a bracket! We spoke to each other in educated terms, assumed intelligence of the other and revealed our creations which struck me as deeply intimate. And we got tipsy. In the essence of full disclosure and honesty, I revealed to her that two of my top "display" teeth come right out, which to my relief, she thought was pretty damned funny. I made mention that I was already kinda hanging out with someone and it wasn't serious, and it washed like soap off my hands. We viewed and read and ended up on the couch next to each other and music played and the air got thick and our thoughts turned to the obvious thing-we desired to touch, and beyond incidental flirtation, it was only a matter of how the spark would start the fire, so I let my heart drop in the risk, grabbed her hand and led her near. It felt bold to me since I thought highly of her and I was wary of the fact that we'd be working together for the next few weeks, but the communications I experienced with her capable mind assured me that any error in this action could be professionally handled. I felt I would be man enough to overcome any potential emotional interference. I moved in and it was electric.

It strikes me as apropos that I had been drinking Lucky U IPA's that night because I was starting to feel the threads of a good thing weaving together. The next morning I wanted to take her out to brunch somewhere Texas and fantastic before we attended a census meeting, and so I found a place with real country style cookin' and we ate such a delicious buffet style meal that we needed to walk around for a while. We went to the park and climbed a knobby tree together, something that overwhelmed me with cuteness when we kissed on the support of its old branches. I managed to squeak out before laughing at portraying the old rhyme, "Dan and Violet, sittin' in a tree..." So dorky, but we all know that this stuff is passable as genius for the guy-girl cuteness exchange, and I believe others may have failed to seize upon such a moment in their lives. We played on the swings, and now as a man four times older than I was when I made regular practice of playing on swings, I fret for the weight I exert on the intermittently stressed chains that carry me back and forth. I remember the grimy cuts of gravel pinching my skin when I failed a proper dismount, and presently feared them. I think of my young backwards bailouts from the backswing's high point on larger swingsets now as completely out of the question, but we played and swung laterally towards each other jabbing and smacking and engaging in swing-footsie, for lack of a better child-like term. We laid in the grass, all new and thrilled at the edge of this found thing, so much still to discover about each other, with plenty left to find that we'd like. We knew the time for being census workers would come upon us, and we planned a staggered entrance. We kept cool to each other at the meeting, and I only laid out a minimal amount of jokes specifically directed at making Violet laugh, attempting to place them in a social context. I saw a little fear in some of her stifled laughs at letting the cat out of the bag in one shared look or something of a tell, but I understood the game we played. When the meeting ended, I walked out with Violet and asked her where she parked her bike. "Right next to yours." We risked a dangerously observable kiss before we parted.

The next few days are filled with enumeration, and I don't know how much I should really grapple with the intricate detail of certain events due to the fact that the wrong person getting ahold of these materials could can my ass in a cell for revealing too much, but I suppose I hurt the picture I paint if I forego the juicy stuff. I picked up the material we learned fairly well, scored highly on our final exam in training, and arrived at an enumeration facility that contained other crew leaders with other enumerators who had gone through training with their respective crew leaders. At the risk of being boring, I'll sum these people up as poorly trained. The group I trained with was better prepared to oversee tasks than some of the other crew leaders. A certain crew leader asked us questions about process, and with furrowed brows, we released to him the information he might know if he looked in his Enumerator Handbook, tidbits of information he ought to have retained before he became a crew leader. His failure to work effectively became my gain as I absorbed hours of work for him.

The following day, tasks were unclear. About 20-25 census workers stood around outside of a food shelter attempting to have all attendees fill out a form. The process that we were to follow made no sense, but it was the way we were told to do it. I devised an effective way to capture as much information as was possible for the assignment, but it ended up imperfect, and one of the people from my crew who I gave a task to could not undertake the task with efficacy since he began delegating responsibilities to other unprepared, confused enumerators. The tasked failed, in my opinion because the method in which we were attempting to acquire the information was STUPID. We had a chance to blanket the line of people and soak up information before they ate, but we ended up clamoring for people to fill out their forms once they had finished eating, when they were no longer beholden to the meal they anticipated having. I could only do so much, and in believing in the importance of the operation for our country for the good of our citizens, and observing the inefficacy of the system, I became disheartened. Wasted money, resources, and thousands of people, maybe even more than a million could be overlooked countrywide.

The real close up experiences were the captivating part of the job, one might even label it adventure. We all trepidatiously awaited Wednesday at midnight when we'd wander out into homeless encampments to find those people that lived independently without addresses and escape the confines of typical societal dues and duties. The fun part is that at this time of the night, most homeless people are either asleep, or getting FUCKED UP! Before we startedlooking for them, we met up with our crew leader who split us into groups. I was secretly stoked because Flether placed Violet in my group, but I think since he and I had formed a little bit of a friendship already, he liked teaming us up because he knows we're capable, work well together, and if we like hanging out why not make it easier to do the work by allowing it. That, and we have been warned about unprofessional fraternization, so we ought to be good to go. We were given information on meeting two guys at a bus stop or in front of a supermarket that will bring us to another guy that will finally bring us to a large homeless encampment. It felt convoluted and mysterious, like we were searching for the City of Gold, but in this case Gold=bums.

We went off to find and count the homeless and we all had our official badges and bright orange vests, just so people can see us in the dark. It seems like it would be a safety measure, but apart from being one man grouped with five girls that I am out with searching for our contacts to the homeless community, I somehow still felt vulnerable with this bright orange target for some insane and intoxicated derelict who feels a little stabby about the census. And for good measure, there are patches of reflective yellow on the chest and bordering the vitals area on the back, just to indicate the really good places to stab, because you know, it's kinda hard to see in the dark woods, and you need something that's going to absorb enough light from the full moon to get a visual on them. Also there are five additional female targets. It's the stuff that good horror films are made of.

Before we arrive at the location we are assigned to, we pick up some double cheeseburgers at McDonald's, in case any of the people we speak to want some food. It is a singular moment in my life when I'll order five McDoubles. We parked when we arrived and the group of us walked around and searched for the original two contact people for a while until we all concurred that we may have done better just driving around. We drove around and didn't find anything. At this point, we just started asking anyone around if they know any area homeless people. "Excuse me, I'm with the US Census, where are all the homeless people around here?" We looked like crazy documentarians trying to find an animal in the wild, but we are being paid to obtain information for the government. An attendant at a gas station tips us off to a guy nearby named after a weather event and we found him with relative ease. He gave us as much information as possible and seemed like a really nice guy. We gave him a McDouble, even though we were supposed to save those for the "gatekeeper" of the encampment we are looking for.

We walked around just a little bit and tried to work it out so a few of us could use a restroom, since we'd all had too much coffee, but one pool hall wouldn't let our one enumerator who didn't have her ID in to simply pee, so that was kinda dick. We're acquiring issues left and right before we decided to just walk around a little more looking for this one guy that for the sake of him having a name, I'll call him Rocket, which is not even close to his real name. So nearly as quickly as our search began, results are yielded as we turn the corner behind the pool hall and discover a gentleman. To me, it is clear that he is masturbating, and I want to continue walking, because as a man I understand what it's like to be interrupted while pleasing your cock. Others later told me he gazed through a peep hole to view pool hall patrons, though I fail to see how that is worthy as beat off material. I motion to Violet and a few others to keep walking, it's not a good idea to disturb him, let the man get his rocks off. This will sound weird, but I'm willing to stick around somewhere nearby to wait until he's taken care of business, but it's me and five other girls, and I have the hunch that one of them, we'll call her Lily, who reminds me a bit of Dora the Explorer in her oblivion, does not know the intricacies of emotion, vulnerability, and privacy involved in rubbing one out, and so upon discovering a human in a back lot, she's interested to know if it is in fact Rocket. "Rocket" she asks in a completely inappropriately friendly tone that finished with an upward inquisitive whine. It was the tone that your mother would take to let you know that dinner was ready, but you were rippled around a dirty magazine, or arched out at a computer. Shame on you for masturbating at 6 o'clock! Alas, nay, it was healthy past midnight for his wanking and when he heard his name, he did an about face that would make a general proud. Fortunately for his comfort and his ability to hide his penis after clearly having been jerking off he donned the elastic waistband sweatpants, and so put the gun away to greet us. At ease, soldier. To my surprise, he presented himself almost cordially, and knew we were coming, despite some clear agitation, and a great deal of visible lotion slathered all over his hands, pants, shirt, and a little on his face. We conversed and tactfully ignored the globs of lotion glooped all over him and started to lay out the deal to him as it had been presented to us, we give you burgers, you show us the money, and in this case, money=homeless people. He got so incredibly offended, and here's where, as a man I could argue, the blue balls set in. He could not believe that we were trying to bribe him with burgers. He lectured us on how we should never ever bribe a homeless person, and I tried to diffuse the situation by being accepting, understanding, and capitulating to his every scold. He warned us that someone else might get really mad, that he's cool, but we could get fucked with if it was someone else, don't bribe him with food, but he expects ten dollars. We had to pony up, because we knew the government would have our back somehow, right? Here, in spite of the demand for money, I started to learn that many homeless have a great deal of pride in the lives they lead, and to them, the only thing they are missing is a proper address. In talking him down, I feel I regained his confidence, and it became clear that everything was A-OK when he offered his lotion soaked mitt up for a handshake. I grabbed it and shook without hesitation, and with as little smooth hand friction as I could possibly control, looking him in the eye, wondering if he knew exactly what he was doing, or if he was really that drunk, or if he thought he could put one over on us that he was in no way shape or form previously performing a solo on the skin flute. "He has soft hands," I thought, followed by, "Where did he get that bottle of Jergen's?"

Rocket began to lead us around to different place where he expected people to reside. The parade of us led by a drunken, questionably sane individual bore little fruit. He clung to his lotion bottle, fully expecting to continue his love-fest after his duty was done, while we trod around behind him traversing rural route intersections and dipping under bridges. We found one extra person that didn't want anyone to come very near unless it was Rocket, and before finding this out, I started to accompany the party down to the habitation, and fell on my ass, banana peel style. I think everyone's commotion to find out if I was OK may have startled whoever lived under the bridge there, so score one for the census hiring the most graceful and careful people around.

The last place Rocket took us had a trail that led up into the woods to a series of encampments that contained an unknown number of people. We stood on the precepice of this trail and Rocket began to brief us on what we were in for if we ventured up there without him. He made several mentions of getting stabbed if he didn't accompany us. The preparatory conversation did plenty to spook everyone out about where we intended to go, and after he completed describing the sensitive nature of entering that rogue society with its own code of ethics and forms of justice, he said, "OK, now only two of you can come with me." I stupidly didn't think about how dangerous this could be, even after copious mentions of stabbings, and I stepped after to follow him and Violet and others start calling my name, a rebuke for what could be a danger to my safety. I snap back to reality and realize they're right, there are far too many variables in play. The guy that stabs me, just might be the guy warning me about all the stabbing. I tried to break it down to Rocket and calmly explain to him that we all felt uncomfortable following him into an unfamiliar place like that in the dark, and he took it pretty well. I guess it ended up being less work for him, but in saying goodbye, he now wanted to converse at length, which turned into rambling. Lily kept the conversation going and I frtohed with the desire to exit the area, and so when she prattled on and on, not taking the hint that we. were. wrapping. it. up., I took my U.S. Census Bureau bag, and surreptitiously smacked it into her leg. She finally got it. But before we went, Rocket, in his ramblings started mentioning his past service in the U.S. Army during Desert Storm. He brought up his service and it made me angry and disappointed that a guy who says he did three tours in Desert Storm ends up a pariah, even if he only did one tour. He asked the group if they knew how long a tour was. I knew, and it made me worthy of several more silky handshakes before we departed. Oh, and he shook hands with everyone else too, just for good measure. I laughed on the inside as I watched them all take their medicine.

We retreated to a Denny's near I-35 to catch up with our crew leader and tell him the good news. When Flether learned about all that transpired, he filled with a deep disappointment in how far askew the operation had gone. We tried to joke around but it didn't bring him back to good spirits very much. The whole evening was not even half over. We still had to go driving around other areas where homeless people were known to sleep. A gap of hours bridged the two missions and so it became an opportunity to take my mandatory break in working and sneak in a nap in my car. Violet needed the rest as well and so across the brown cracked arm rest of the Longshot, we held hands and shared our small suffering and the prone state of needing peaceful rest. A small, sweet kiss goodnight to risk our jobs once more.

Consciousness returns to haunt us after a meager hour and three quarters. I don't reach deep sleep, I'm certain, maybe not even any sleep at all, but the conservation of the energy I formerly used to keep my body upright and talk did make a difference. Once again I felt capable of counting bums. It didn't really get interesting until about 9 in the morning when we met up at a halfway house and spoke with a dude who had a comprehensive understanding for the area and the way many homeless people choose to lead their lives. They served us a bacon and eggs breakfast which gave me a remarkable rebound, and Violet as well, so when more hours were offered to us to wander around through the encampments we previously declined to enter in the dark with Rocket, I jumped at them with Violet teetering and finally following suit.

We trailed the dude I shall name Mark into the woods and the first place we found stunned nearly everyone. The place was set up so meticulously with a pragmatist's skill and decorated to boot! An adorable dog greeted us as we approached the camps. Mark knew these guys and introductions were exchanged, and they showed us their digs and a hospitality that I did not for the life of me expect. It impressed me to learn how comfortable some homeless people are in arrangements like these, and how skilled they were in appropriating what they needed, and how much they respected their own environment. It certainly impressed and enlightened me to see it, but we had great luck in experiencing this. Most of the places that followed fit closer paradigms of homelessness stereotypes.

We checked under bridges, woke sleeping people to obtain information, and tramped through maze like twisted paths to empty campsite after empty campsite. I'd say that the later morning attempt got us a bunch of information, but not as much human interaction. Everywhere Mark took us was a place that he knew people were or had been living. Violet exercised a little more diligence in completing forms than anyone else and counted the absentee folk whenever Mark could describe the people that were currently not at the places they go to sleep. Some of the sites were embarrassing to view, piles of trash so near to where the residence/tent stood that it spawned a fury for the existence of these conditions inside the borders of a country like ours. How did these people get forced into this state? The choices they make?

Not every worker tailed Mark so closely, but I hungered for the knowledge of what our society often overlooks. Mark took us through an area that had not too recently been cleared out by the police. Old sites rested slightly off the main path, surrounded in trash around the clearing of the former tent area. At one point, Mark smelled something dead and turned the group around. Our last stop brought us to a property now owned by some corporation and the travel involved to find the people we knew existed stretched, but bore us witness to a dirtbiking course so intricate and plain old big that everyone still present that hadn't gone home expressed disbelief at the sheer amount of man hours necessarily involved in its construction, and demanded to know what brilliant minds engineered it. We arrived at a clearing where a shack lofted above its foundation, and Mark called out to approach. "Hello," he said, "Anybody there? Mind if we come over?" His greetings were not government issue, but sounded far better than "Hello, my name is Dan, I work for the US. Census. May I approach?" We found kids there. My age. Impressive guys, the two that greeted us and the one we didn't meet. Violet looked around at the home they composed for themselves in awe, saying "This is how I'd wanna live." I could see it being a life of simple satisfaction, but allowed the thought of needing a city to attack the mind I tried to open. She interviewed them and I perceived a longing and wonder in her eyes in speaking to them. We interviewed them far beyond census business and one of the fellas played us an impressive tune on his clarinet. It made the entire tired zombie march through empty places completely worth dealing with to see these handy gents out in the woods, self-sufficient and living beautiful, wild lives, the lives many hipsters shittily tattoo on their chests and legs and never actually stand for. We peaked and valleyed back through the dirtbike course as we heard the clarinet fade, our exit music for our coffee sweating walk back to warming cars that would bring us to beds that would accept us no matter what we smelled like, no matter what we saw, that we'd sadly part with too soon to return to government business, and the sham it may or may not be.

Statistics:
$252 for repairs to my bike
6 slimy handshakes with a man who had very recently used his right hand to masturbate with lots of lotion
5 girls who shook that same hand once
34 hours of consciousness in a row for the enumeration of the homeless
$64 taxable government dollars paid to me to hit it off with Violet on a pseudo date
2 bagels
Infinity iced coffees from Austin Java for 2.84
2 awesome girls I am suddenly seeing.
3 times I almost cried from the experience of seeing the conditions that we let people fall into combined with the futility of our operation
7 times I expect my father to call me a bleeding heart liberal for that previous statement.

Drinks from...

Day 77

Nothing

Day 78

454 Lonestar @Miranda's

Day 79

455 Live Oak Big Bark Red @Hole In The Wall
456 Lonestar @Long Branch

Day 80

457 Stash IPA @Mellow Mushroom
458 Widmer Black IPA
459 Ranger IPA
460 Lonestar @Metz Park
461 Lonestar on East Side
462 PBR @Jackalope
463 PBR

Day 81

464 Elissa IPA @Snack Bar
465 Ranger IPA @home
466 Ranger IPA
467 Ranger IPA
468 Live Oak IPA @Whole Foods
469 Amnesia IPA @home
470 Dr. Lovingstone @East Side Show Room
471 Rogue Double Dead Guy @The Good Knight

Day 82

472 Lonestar @home
473 Amnesia IPA
474 Lucky U IPA @Violet's
475 Lucky U
476 Lucky U
477 Lucky U

Day 83

478 Shiner 101 @Moonshine Patio & Grill
479 Amnesia IPA @home
480 Lonestar

Day 84

481 Lonestar @home

Day 85

482 Lonestar @home

Next: The enumeration operation changes, I have one of the worst pedicab experiences of my life (flat tires, puke, near death), and I have two girlfriends. How will I fuck it up?

No Rest for SXSW

2010-04-07T11:50:00.000-07:00

Days 69-76

The closer I get to catching up to a state of currency in reporting my world, I find myself questioning whether that is valuable. Is it better to have time sift through the events and filter out the mundane? Or is it in some cases the mundane moments and how I experience them that make my perspective interesting? Recently I've found the extended perspective on some events useful in how I approach them. I know what will ultimately be in store, I can create a conclusion or follow up to a moment, a mention, a setup and payoff cycle is possible. Perhaps that is what editing the final product will be saved for. Or maybe it's just going to be fine either way. Hearsay! Conjecture!

People pop back into my life in fun random ways. Re-friending, random encounters, the essence of a trivial moment we shared from our defunct relationship returns to me in the present. These lines of people get carved back into the wood. The stories end when you hear their names again, or new surprises unfold. My old roommate Catrina will be, at least for the foreseeable future, relegated to the rotting innards of this country. Additionally, I'll meet up with a girl I knew from Boston in Colorado to re-route my trip through some Northern states with some company!

The new, improved itinerary:

Here (Austin)
LA for 2 days
Boston to NY to Boston for work and family and writing and work
back to Austin
Dallas
Norman
Lubbock
Denver
Salt Lake City
Yellowstone National Park
Missoula, MT
Idaho (insert joke)
Seattle
Vancouver
Portland, OR
San Francisco
Los Angeles

Sure beats blowing a wad in Vegas.

So where were we? Oh yes, blowing wads. Sunday and Monday were tame. Saw a movie, didn't like it much, and chilled with Kyle. Went on standby for Tipsy Taxi, stayed at home all night watching TV and waiting for a call that never came in. Went to sleep before the shift ended, and that ended up being fine. Great job!

Tuesday was a bit more interesting. I spent the day blogging or something I expect I would be doing during the daytime that is not really worth relating to you, the reader, since our lives are filled with such inane, thoughtless moments, but my evening, friend, was where it was at. (re-read that sentence in a very white sounding way)

Well St. Patrick's Day was approaching, and SXSW had kicked off and that meant music, tons and tons of music. Tuesday night, I caught up with Ben, my Snack Bar friend, and he told me there were bands playing in a show he was assembling at a place called the Rooftop, and that a party would follow at The Kasbah. Andrea McKenna was coming down this evening and we were planning to meet up somewhere and this seemed convenient enough. I want to be clear here, there is a LOT of free shit happening that only requires you to send an email, or wave your hands around in the air in a fashion befitting of someone who is experiencing apathy. So I'm forced to make very important decisions about where to be at what times. Ben told me one thing about the show and when I got to the rooftop, it was not yet really going on, so I decided I'd leave and go to some free geeky thing downtown. When I left, I made a move for my keys and realized they were not on me. I never do this. I always have the freakout and they are always there and my freakout ends for a total "Freakout: The Game" point allotment of 1 point. Quick explanation: The scale goes up to 100, where something is so intense that your head HAS to explode. Even simple death is only down around 60 or 70, depending on how you go, and point values for assigned numbers are geometrically more intense for each ascending digit. So my freakout continues, and I realize they are indeed not on my person, and I jump to the conclusion that I've locked my car and they must be inside. I go to my rusty beast and in the growing shadows, I observe a Boston Red Sox lanyard hanging limply from the ignition, a tongue mocking my damned foolishness. I handily recall that I have roadside assistance thanks to mom! Fuck yeah, mom! So I called the roadside assistance business and after a confused navigation of their automated menu to acquire human contact, they sent a guy over who looked to me like some dork that learned how to break into cars, and took over an hour to arrive. I suppose that taking an hour is better than not showing at all, or he, himself locking his own keys inside of his business vehicle, with the break-in kit inside, having to call another road-side assistance break in dork to help him help me, but still, I'm annoyed. He parks like a total jack-ass, and, even as I have clearly pointed out to him the parking space I've been saving, he parks on the wrong side of the road, and becomes that stupid fucking twat who makes you do an S-curve to arrive at the stop sign, still diagonal from trying to get back into your lane, and in trepidation that someone might want to actually use their allotted lane to go down the street the other way, leaving YOU, the non-offender, looking like a putz. So I'm thinking, "Great, here's the help." He has a little trouble snaring the lock button and pulling it out, but when he does, I'm super stoked, and he doesn't want any money or anything-gravy!. Do you tip a guy like this? And if you do tip him, will he use the money on "Magic: The Gathering" cards? I can't authorize that kind of expenditure (says the former obsessive baseball card collector) If you rate the overall experience as service, I say 10% is my maximum. Slow, bungling, might have poured me a beer with about 1/3 of it head. Might have served me the wrong dish, but one look at his face and you say, "He just does not need to be fucked with today. I'm gonna eat this wrong sandwich and get on with my life." And afterwards, you really did get what you needed, and you can live with the fact that you made it easy on the sucker. All these thought here, and I remember I've driven over 3,000 miles in a rusty 1984 Toyota Corolla, standard, and the first time I need roadside assistance is because I've locked my keys inside my car in Texas. He's a genius, and got that ol' Irish luck. Shrewd like a Jew, stubborn like a Mick. I'm the dorky white Muhammad Ali of...fuckin comedy? I don't know man. Does this mean I get to light the olympic torch?

Once I reclaim my keys, it's about that time where I should be getting back to The Rooftop, so I lock my car again, keys in hand, and return to the bar. I got asked how downtown was and I vaguely reply that it was cool, embarrassed to admit my idiocy, but if everyone knew how stupid everyone was all the time, I think we might have more fun. I watch a few really neat bands, and Andrea and her boyfriend show up. We have a great time bantering, her boyfriend is really nice, and I do my damnedest to make him feel comfortable with me, since I have made many assumptions about his insecurities based on the facts I have been privy to file in my spongy office, and it pays off. He's perfectly personable when we talk, and I approve of him based on this meeting. They head off back to Killeen, a place I don't think I need to visit, but want to, just to get some real Texas, but I waffle. Houston, Dallas, San Antonio... They are all close enough that I could make it happen, but should it be?

Right about here, I received a text message from Chad saying, "Ginger Man. Get here." So I do! I abide, man. I get there pretty quickly, and as soon as I do, I'm commanded by Chad to go to the bar and get myself a beer on his tab. And then another. And another. And everyone's deep into it and the idea to go to this gay bar Rain comes up. I'm ushering everyone towards the idea of going back up to The Kasbah for the after party for the show I had only recently left, and the compromise of one drink at Rain is reached. While inside of Rain, I stood at the bar watching gay guys talk to each other, feeling pretty good about myself, expecting someone to throw game at me, but mostly just bored, considering I have other thoughts on my mind, and I had a moment to be down with my loneliness in Texas. I peeled off from the wallflowers and told them something to the effect of, "I'm gonna go see if there's any chicks in this place," knowing there are probably some really wonderful, liberal minded girls in this place who have gay friends and/or like to dance. Well I found one. She was dancing. She was taaaaaall, man! I got her number after some flirtation, and I am alerted that the Tipsy Taxi has arrived to whisk us away to the uptown party. We had collected a small entourage here, and as Brooke, my guardian angel in Austin, drives the Longshot packed full of drunks, the follow car is also loaded up with slobs who are joining us. We tip well since I'm getting this ride for free as an employee of Tipsy Taxi, and go to the Kasbah, where we smoke hookah and drink vodka drinks for free while listening to some singer-songwriter girl. Cool enough, but hunger strikes and Kerbey Lane, a diner, is sooo close. Eight or so of us have migrated over there, and some record producer is now tagging along, and I am content to flirt with some taken girl who throws it back, having made clear her situation, and me acknowledging; we sit directly across from each other. By the time I finish the food and people start getting up, I'm confused and expecting to spend, but I'm not going to buck the trend because who am I to disrupt the flow? I got up and just walked outside with Jo, who I drove back to her car now that we've all sobered up a bunch, and she told me that this record producer guy, who I honestly did not know was with us, paid for the whole check that eight of us had tabulated. Jo thanked him profusely, but I don't think anyone really knew he even did that. Sometimes when you do things right, people won't be sure you've done anything at all-and that can be either empowering or frustrating.

The next day is St. Patrick's Day, and Kyle has been threatening me that it would be epic, but for all his hype, I didn't see him until like 11 pm. As quickly as I could gather myself, I went to meet up with Shane O'Connor, disillusioned ex-pedicabber from Boston, now living in New York and producing records, in town for SXSW. He's down on 6th St and there is Saturday night havok out there on this Wednesday, the streets are closed, there is green and slutty everywhere, and rolling into it, I discover a piper and watch him blow "For Boston" and release a loaded sigh before moving on. Shane's a few deep when I go find him, and we searched for a solid party to hit, something damned Irish, we are two Micks, afterall. We went over to Fado (Gaelic for "A long time ago") because there is a big block party over there, but the Jew in me comes out and says that there's no reason to spend $15 to stand under a tent. Maybe it's not so much Jewish, but sensible. We go to the coffee shop next door which happens to be Halcyon, and they have a full bar so I can grab an Irish coffee to kick start the bender while we catch up and decide what we will do to construct a masterpiece.

A side note here. These days I write, the episodes of them all, these are in my mind, all efforts to create perfect days, and at this stage of my existence, I find that I have been afforded a few opportunities to come really close to what would be for me the archetypal perfect day. It's the day that carries over into the next day as glowing, ebullient energy. The things that happen to you that are so good that even when you have a neutral expression, people around you know something about you is different, something's up. You've just got the aura of it hovering in the room around you or in front of you on the street like an unfurling invisible carpet that deems you special. We who know best for ourselves, spend whatever duration of our lives looking for the perpetual ownership of that pointlessly excited way you press the elevator button to ascend to the tax office and fill out some forms, and everything that little poke embodies.

With the positivity of a form-filling fool, I attempted to coordinate separate segments of friends into congregations, and ended up first at Little Woodrow's with Brian Fahey and his friends, where I set off an Irish car-bomb. Then to the Dog and Duck with Jo and her sister plus husband for a tented area that was actually free, with music, of course, Shane tagging along the whole way. Time crept up on us quickly, and Shane and I both wanted to go see a former Boston pedicabber girl, Madi Diaz, play her show at Maggie Mae's. She's got a pretty successful band thing going on, so I've been interested in checking her out for a good, long while. I enjoyed the set, and we said quick hellos and goodbyes, and left. Shane rode this asinine bike down from his sister's, and caught a flat tire at some point on the way to the Dog and Duck, so rode down to Maggie Mae's on the flopping rubber. This meant that it was time to acquire repair services. I suggested East Side Pedal Pushers, the shop that was literally under that guy Scott's apartment, since it was near and took us East to the cooler bars on the other side of I-35. I called ahead and they were closed, but still hanging out, and were down to give us a few fixes.

On the way to East Side Pedal Pushers, I see a beautiful girl fiddling with her bike. It happens all over the city of Austin. I passed her and ride up the street until I'm held up by a traffic light and Shane's flat tire, which he continues to ride on. This girl rode up next to me and I chuckle, because its just a perfect opportunity to say something smart, and what I end up saying is a rather smooth, chortling "Hey," and she takes off my chuckle, "What's so funny? I was fixing my light." I put her at ease, asked her where she was heading, and tell her my friend has a bike problem to elicit transferred sympathy while I waited for Shane to catch up. The light changes as he pulls even while the girl prepares a foot to propel her, but there is no flowing traffic pushing us along since we just came from the blocked off Sixth Street. I seize the moment. "Hey." She stops. "Do you want to catch up with us later?" "Yeah, sure!" "Whattayou got?" "I got a five one two..." This is a very easy thing to do in Austin, and similarly a great way to invite constant disappointment and potential heartbreak on yourself. Her name is Martha. I texted her that night and got no reply. I randomly called a week later and we spoke, though she was busy, and I goofed and said something stupid. Not offensive, but idiotic by the judgements of an objective listener of "guys' first calls after obtaining a girl's number phone calls," which I imagine would be a hilarious and pathetic portrait of the situation of our dating rituals. Her attitude went from, "Call me back," to, "I'll call you back," in the course of three sentences. You have such a thin line to walk on in these conversations because rejection is just an awkward laugh, a snort, a stutter away, or in this case, the mention of an unnecessary piece of information. The litmus paper turns brown.

To enter East Side Pedal Pushers, you have a ramp that abuts a small set of stairs on their right so one can comfortably walk a bike up, without lifting. Neat! Inside is very bike shop, basement-ish, and pound for pound East Side hipster charming. One of the bike mechanics is a giant man named Chalo, who I recognized as a member of the marching band I first saw at Shangri-La two weeks earlier. The other is Lee the owner, who sports an impressively thick head of hair that I, as someone not yet bald, felt jealous of. They are kind, reasonable, and warm. Lee runs the business generously, and it encourages me to return. Chalo fixed Shane's flat, and I decide that while Cairo is still in disrepair, I should replace the seatpost that I sit atop, if only as a thank you for the continued usage of Nick's bike. Chalo offers us bourbon, so we of course graciously accept. I gag a little bit on the flavor, not quite my favorite, and I jealously stare at the ranger IPA he drinks, and so venture to request one. Granted. It's a celebration at the bike shop. I mentioned that Chalo looked familiar and peg him as a member of the marching band, and he reveals that they are playing tonight at midnight. We talk about the washboard player, and how brilliantly sexy she is as she plays the old symbol of female domestication for pure joy. I break down and buy a trendy and expensive helmet. We left expressing deep appreciation and slurring drunk sincerity. The right way to run a business.

Now it's damned late for an Irishman on St. Patrick's Day by the time Shane and I even arrived at East Side Pedal Pushers, not to mention that I'm eleven deep and Shane is right there with me. We went on the short ride to meet Chad and Kyle, who finally shows up on the map squarely after the ten o'clock hour, after having pumped me up saying, "gird your loins," meaning we were going to have a bender to end lesser, more effeminate benders, a bender that punches the air and makes a karate "keeai" and other benders piss themselves in fear, not drunken incontinence. I did hope for that, but I did not receive it with him, not that I am entirely dissatisfied with what I got. When we meet, I make a point of it to call him out on what he promised me versus what he did, and how he did not communicate that the first thing wouldn't happen at all, and not for any known circumstances. We resolve the argument and I take account of the fact that the circle is complete: Chad is next to Kyle and me. We take shots and the conversation we had popped like an endless manhandling of bubble wrap, but sadly for too short a time. So many other people were there with us that it complicated the way the changing of venues would happen, and I wanted very badly to go watch Chalo's band with the fine, fine washboard player, and they were scheduled to play mere blocks away at the East Side Show Room. I got everyone excited for the idea of live music in the form of a big Balkan sounding marching band, and we went over there. I found it easy to sway everyone, since I think, people here in Austin sure do love their shows, and live action happenings, and have broad tastes in music. The show went off at midnight and we scored some good positioning as I recall. The show was awesome, I really love marching bands, but from here the details are harder to produce. What I have cobbled together is that after the show, Shane, convinced me that it was time to leave the boring scene, everybody seemed to be out of energy. Though I did not understand my decision to leave Kyle before closing time, I rode the beer scooter to Shangri-La, transporting instantly.

I opened a tab at Shangri-La and before I even start to look around at what's going on, I see something remarkable. It's Casey, the blond girl I met in New Orleans, the one with the dirty hands. She is in the bar I'm in, and we run into each other face to face, recognizance happening in each of us simultaneously. And her friend Debi. I'm so excited to see them I buy them a round and we talked about our journeys and I introduce Shane, and get Casey's new number which goes directly to her, not Debi. This is good, magnificent news. This is the kind of thing I believe should be in the Bible.

It is my understanding that Shane and I went separate ways after this, and having spoken with Casey and Debi, I did not seem too drunk at all, which makes me feel better about the evaporation of certain details from the evening. The next day, I look at my call log and rediscover Martha, and am reminded of Debi/Casey the last vivid memory I have, but I also see that I used my "bump" application for my iphone with someone named Marion Coddou, who upon texting her told me she wanted to put me in a little dress and hurt me. Not that I'm really into that kind of thing, but it was too bad she was joking, because I would have liked a sort of sequel to the shenanigans of Orlando, where I was basically screamed at. All I'm gonna say is I would have given her my lunch money. I was hoping that Marion was the girl who played the washboard and that I had somehow made a successful play for her number, but as it turns out, Marion is apparently a really crazy friend of Kyle's girlfriend Priya. Whew, at least we have a mutual friend. Keep the illumination coming.

I think some time on Monday, I was talking online with people, and I had messaged a guy I knew was from Austin since he appeared to be online. He mentioned that he was just there and it was too bad we missed each other, and that a mutual friend of ours was in Austin. In fact, they were speaking right at that very moment and he wanted my number. Within seconds I receive a call from Alex Meek, a former driver for Boston Pedicab. He tells me he's working for Red Devil Rides, a bike trailer company, and that I should come down to the shop and talk to his boss. I take his advice and go down there on Tuesday and chat with Phil the owner, and he tells me he'll let me ride without a license this week, but that I have to get my stuff together, and he's only letting me do that since I'm friends with Alex. I sure am glad I went to hang out with him that one time, and made efforts to hire his friends, but the interesting part of this is that I revealed some key information to the upper management about how I knew he was taking the company for a ride, and that led to his ultimate dismissal from Boston Pedicab, so we just kept that on the DL, because I needed that job.

I was so beat up and rotten from the day before that it felt like I was wearing dried up fish sauce underneath the entirety of my skin. I went to Chad's since he suggested I come over and drink shandies on his balcony. I knew today was going to be my first day of pedicabbing for Red Devil, so I didn't have long, but I went over anyway and had a shandy with Chad as he suggested. There was music breathing out of everywhere. His balcony is the perfect place to chill and listen to the shows that happen across the street. Chad was seriously considering a rope ladder descending from his railing to help facilitate the ascension of strange guests. Despite not having this amenity, we got to yell at passersby that they should come up and join us, or let them know what we think of their appearance (compliments only), and plenty of dorky "Hey"'s going on, often followed by the often futile "Come back!" Asking people to come back never really does work, it's too bad.

I rode over to the Red Devil Rides shop on my roommate's bike and to my surprise it was deemed inappropriate for hitching a trailer to. I needed a mountain bike of some sort with bigger tires and better gears. Phil found me a bike that was not going to be used that evening since the guy who owned it didn't intend to work, and we rigged the trailer up to it. This bike sucked. It's gears didn't work properly, especially in low gears which were important when going uphill with dead weight behind you. Also, the brakes were barely functional and required the consistent pressure of the strongest handshake I can offer to stop the rig, and became particularly dangerous while going downhill. I struggled with the new rig and passengers could tell. I explained to a lot of my passengers that I used to ride a tricycle and this thing was weird to me and my bike sucked. Often pedaling from a dead stop, my bike would wheelie because of how light it was in comparison to what it had to pull. The rides were everywhere, and I didn't struggle to obtain them, but tips weren't that great, especially when the law in Austin requires posted rates on each pedicab. $5 per person for a short ride, $10 per person for a long one. I ripped the sign off the cross bar of the trailer and the money got better. My last ride was awful though, three kids up a large hill for $26. The hill was steep enough that I was terrified the entire time that I wouldn't make it up the hill and the trailer would pull me backwards and run away on me, spewing its drunk contents out onto the door of a car, or worse, into more serious traffic. It sure is interesting to see what your body will do when you don't have any alternatives to not finishing a difficult ride like this.

I intended to take Friday off and succeeded with great success at doing so since I totally didn't work at all. Pretty much the first thing that happened in my day was to go get food at Whole Foods, a staple of my lifestyle in Austin since their flagship store is there, and eating at their on-site restaurant kiosks is a steal. I'm going to mention it now, but you'll hear it again, two massive burrito sized tacos are only $5, and it only takes one to fill you. Not to mention you can get the most pulled pork you've ever seen between two pieces of bread for about the same amount in addition to sides for just a little bit more. I like to put some Insanity hot sauce on my pork stack and they continue to warn me every time I reach for it that it is extremely hot, sometimes twice in one sitting.

I then met up with some dude who was selling his mountain bike on craigslist, and tested it out. Seemed good enough to me, I lowballed him a little bit since it was going to need some repairs, and he bit, so I took my new pedicabbing bike away, glad to have a bike with highly functional brakes that would be more likely to stop the floating death trailer I would guide from the front. I stuffed it into the back of the Longshot and went down to pick up Debi and Casey at the corner of Congress and 6th, because I didn't think anybody else would be around there, ha ha. We echolocated through cellphones and they piled into my front seat and we went to hang out at my house for a little while before hitting up the show run by a guy I knew from high school, way back when. Casey was in the middle and so I kept warning her that I was shifting into third and I was about to punch her, hoping I'd never have to go into 5th and give her a real good sock in the leg, but secretly thinking that it'd be funny to hear her stretch out one of those girly expressions. "Ooooowwwww-wuh"

We spent too long at my house chatting and getting a litle toasty and I don't know why, but somehow I couldn't get the girls to uproot themselves from my house. Maybe it was because they lived in a van, and maybe it wasn't, but Casey, who when I met her in New Orleans had the dirtiest hands I ever saw, kept trying to wrest away from me my "I Have Clean Hands" sticker that I had obtained at Rudy's BBQ. It became a token of her behavior. When I thought she was being a dick, I'd rip the sticker off of her like a dramatically removed movie military merit patch. When she was being nice, I'd give it back to her. She really wanted that sticker, and would do anything except wash her hands to get it, and that disturbed me. I think at some point I gave up the fight. She's filthy and I guess she likes that.

I have attempted several different times to meet up with this guy I knew from elementary and high school named Clayton Keiber. I was in Fenway Park going to the bathroom one day while attending a Red Sox game, and I randomly recognized him. He told me he comes up to Boston a lot, we became Facebook friends, and I started to see notices about his record label, Midriff Records. I like to think he named the label after the rule that was instituted at George F Baker High School that students were not allowed to wear shirts that revealed a bare midriff. And who the fuck is George F. Baker, anyway? I found out he planned to attend SXSW, so I decided to try to be at one of his shows. So when we finally mobilized the girls, we hopped up to Thunderbird Coffee where one of Clayton's label artists was set to play, followed by another one of his friends, but it took so ridiculously long to get out of my house that we missed even crossing paths with Clayton, to my disappointment. I got over it relatively quickly since I don't even really know the guy that well, but heck I'm all about reconnecting with people and accumulating the knowledge of people's life experiences. I find that the more of them I know, my network grows, the more I know people, and the more accurately I can make fun of them or figure them out. I suppose what I really mean is that I desire to become capable of revealing how my human experience is similar to theirs, and ideally that should be funny. Right? *Echoing cough*

Nick and I tried to take the girls around a little and show them some cool places, but I think they got a little too hammered. As vagabond girls, they hadn't been keeping their fuel tanks filled and so when we popped in to Rio Rita tipping a little liberally, they poured us drinks that were ridiculously skewed according to Mr. Boston's Guide to Mixology. Hello. I'm a mixologist. Welcome to my hospital. No, I cannot treat your renal failure, but I certainly can make you think you are more attractive and confident. Well I think Casey was feeling particularly confident after this because when we marched off towards "Dirty" Sixth Street, Casey and Debi drummed up a healthy argument about Casey having a phone and Debi not having a phone and Casey having to stay near Debi to make plans work for both of them, so logically Casey stormed off with the phone into the grass field of people. Debi, Nick and I hit a bar up and I went to meet Shane back over on the East-East side as I thought Nick, God Bless him, was trying to make a more special connection with Debi.

Nothing really special happened from just being at the bar, but I traded texts all night with Miranda, the girl I had met at Rain several nights earlier. We were trying to orchestrate a way to meet up for a drink, but it seemed to be falling flat and so when the idea came up that we could hang out after hours, I said OK, let's do that. My phone held the last straws of its charge and I knew it intended to die on me later, so I started to quickly push for definitive plans. She said she'd meet me at the bar but was tied up and then I got bored of the "plaid mess" I inhabited, and then it became clear: Meet you in 15 minutes at your place. My place. I started to hurry. I killed my beverage, and left the bar looking for a cab on the East side. Good fuckin' luck, Jack. Aaand now my phone is dead. So with an imaginary time bomb clock ticking down, I began to panic. No cabs. I'm not too far. Serious hookup potential here with her coming to my pad, and mostly, I hate the idea of her at my house in my sketchy hood not knowing where I am or having any way to contact me. I started running in the flat-foot skate shoes I'm wearing. I'm going up hill and north and starting to really freak. I make it from 6th to 11th before I flag some random guy down and tell him I'll give him like $10 to take me a few more blocks to my house, desperate, dude. He agrees and I learn his name is Brad. I'm a huge fan of this guy. I don't stop thanking him for the entire ride, explaining my situation, and when I go to pull out money, he declines! Thank you Jeebus, a little rebound karma from getting hit by a car! I go directly to the electrical outlet to plug the effing thing in and it just won't boot up fast enough, and I'm still flipping out that she may have decided to skip the whole idea. I spent a few minutes of cheering my phone on to charge with "comeoncomeoncomeoncomeon," until it finally booted, I called, and the stress dissipated to all corners of the universe in learning she was lost a few miles away, and basically only 3 easy turns and ten minutes away. I wiped off my sack because I was sweating balls there, man.

She called when she was arriving and I went out to meet her. We voice parked her car, though I take little responsibility for the adequacy of the job, and she stepped out. I watched her body grow like a bamboo stalk, I didn't know when it was going to stop and if it would snap in the wind under it's own weight. Jesus, she is tall. I forgot how tall she was! I did one of those little drop your chin down off to the side moves and gave myself a little "Fuck yeah, Dan," before proceeding to the whole greeting thing. Inside, we clicked and tipsily talked for an hour straight. But after what felt natural, you don't expect someone to tell you they have to take care of their dog at 7:30 am. I reacted with a sharp, "Really?" I coldly got the affirmation I requested, and she exited on "Nice meeting you." I couldn't wrap my tired, crusty mind around it, but I also exhaled in relief and settled back into my comfort, because now I could once again pass gas, untaxed. You have to get there, you know? Someone's got to say, "Oops...are we cool with that?" Or even without the oops. But I still feel uncomfortable when that moment does arrive because the party may not know how much I like cheese and that my intestines are like an Exxon oil refinery. So yeah, it was good she was gone, sorta for her sake, but this thing kinda happens and you wake up alone, pensive, and remember it and ask yourself if you were just dreaming or was there a ghost in your room that fucked you, or if you really did have such a nice time? And then the thoughts of your daily routine blot it out and you remember to eat. Is it me, or are humans really this versatile? Are we so screwed and also so capable of making outrageous adjustments for relationships? I think music, art, and literature in general would say so. Danielle Steele, the Muzak of literature, even says so, in the third person, in her "novels". I would be willing to bet.

I write these words and try to be honest and I know many who read them and I do fear judgement for the explicit details I present. I hope that what you read is not leading you to believe this is the entirety of what you get in my person, I feel often kind and loving and caring, and not like the carousing philanderer I may appear to be in these documentations, but I also know that telling others about how I held the door open for like fifteen seconds for this old lady, or make particular phone calls and extended efforts of friendship to be helpful and supportive of some people doesn't exactly make for a good read. I'd otherwise be doing myself a disservice by hiding things, and perhaps the best of you will understand that, and that I want the same lofty moral victories that most genuinely good people do. This thought is emboldened by the fact that, today, I am writing inside of an A&P with a Starbucks and wifi in Vernon, NJ. While I think everyone knows how I feel about New Jersey, this town revealed the memory of one of my several near deaths. When I was 11, I was at Action Park, "The World's Largest Water Park" perhaps technically only by basic acreage, and my father had taken me for a day there. I mostly just liked to swim, the tall water slides freaked me out for fear of death and jumping off of anything 30 feet high seemed like a terrible idea, even though I used to imitate Luigi's flailing legs from Super Mario Bros 2 off the high diving boards at some pools. My Dad and I retrieved a raft to go on a rapids rafting course and had to carry it all the way up the hill to enjoy the slide down. I remember it being heavy, and me being weak under it, and the ride being so much better because of the enduring annoyance of that stretching walk-up. At the end of the ride, the rafts accumulated in a pool, and I flopped over the side of the raft into the water to enjoy being back underneath the air. The space where I went in disappeared under the shifting rafts, and submerged with my eyes open, I panicked underwater. I tried to stand up, but the rafts were large, heavy to me, and suctioned to the water. I looked around in dread that none of the panels above me would ever relent a space to squeeze my small frame through. Finally the chaos yielded and I came up gasping. For my Dad, I imagine he didn't know what had happened and thought I was just fooling around in the water, but for me, it was horrifying and I had no way to explain it, and therefore left it unsaid, but here I sit in one of the towns that offered me an early experience of mortality and know that I shouldn't hold back because this is a picture I can freeze and save of the awesome, though generously imperfect life I've been offered and how I attempt to capitalize on it, and actualize in it.

Of course words are words and deeds are deeds. Being good IS actually about aligning the two, it's true, Ron.

I got my shit together just to ride to the Red Devil shop. I dreamt up lofty goals of four and five C notes coming home with me, but what I got was a high energy short shift. I rode hard and had a solid night with no exceptional rides to mention, and the weather turned bitter cold towards the evening, so I abandoned the idea of riding extremely late in the cold in favor of revelry. I dropped the shift around 10 pm and went home to change and acquire extra clothing, and maybe even get a pregame beverage on. I sat in a warp zone for about 45 minutes in that hovering state where your head does tiny concentric circles as if it was going to come in for a landing on your pillow. I knew nothing was going on tomorrow and that this evening couldn't be passed up since the Red Devil Shop intended to throw a 4 keg bash at the shop starting at 3 AM, and invite and unite the pedicab community! SXSW forged on into it's last gasp, and so must I, but also, continue gasping after SXSW, clearly. I thought of all the fun that was happening and rose up like a marionette and danced out the door. The cold bike ride put me right awake, and I zoomed down to West 6th to meet Chad at the Red Fez. I danced and watched an interesting dance circle form on a set of two steps with a railing that rose to an elevated platform lounge area. The birthday girl, a friend of Berto's busted a move and others traded off featured moments in the center. The railing became handy for anti-gravity dance moves, and I felt like my moves were particularly good and/or care free that night, but then this girl got in there and shook her booty like she was trying to get it to fly right the fuck off of her body, and I subdued my idea of showing off. You just can't top a good booty shake.

Chad and I took off for Beauty Bar, me pedaling my bike, Chad sitting on my bike seat holding on to my waist like we were a cute little couple, but mostly to save time. Changing venues functioned to connect us to another familiar human link, and after a short wait in line, I suffered through a giant costumed bear playing a mindless spin of hipster brain-bleeding heaven, and knew it was not my night for Beauty Bar. All the while, I'm texting Shane and Melissa (girl who got her car towed girl) and finding out what their deal is. I found Shane at Emo's, around the corner, talking music with whoever, and ultimately getting booted because it was 2 am. Melissa met up with us boasting a keg nearly full of Shiner Bock in her office, not too far from us! Shane and I knew we were ready to help her demolish it. On the way, Melissa started to invite others to join us, based on what they look like and the assessment she can make of them visually, which I found to be kind of poor considering we nearly had some sketchy fuckin' guys follow us back to her office, the start of something in the police blotter. So I start doing the same! I invited this random girl Mary with us, who is cute, and sweet, a groupie for the Crash Kings, and has nothing to do while waiting for her flight to LA at 5 in the morning. For some reason, this upset Melissa, but we four go up and drink and we're trying anything we can to make music happen, resulting in playing music off of Pandora on my phone. We did our best to damage that keg before heading down to the pedi-party, but the whole time, Melissa was really cranky and we got into snarky verbal exchanges, which for Shane was a good thing because I started to see the fucking love connection blossoming. On our way out, we walked Mary to a cab, and Melissa drove Shane and herself down to the party as I biked. We walked in to see and hear music playing and kegs lined up. It really wasn't the bash I had been envisioning, it was not so well attended, and so pretty much bored of the situation, and knowing Shane and Melissa held similar sentiments, and since it was witch's tit cold out, I politely asked Melissa for a short ride home. We were already on the East side, and biking to the shop from my house takes five minutes. I cannot believe I had to sway her! So I began saying my goodbyes, agreed to the boss that I'd try to obtain my Texas pedicab license this coming week, and I went to find them and discovered that they'd already left! I call and explain to them that it had been agreed upon to give me a reasonably short ride, it's frigid cold out, can you please come get me? I got in Melissa's car to Shane's apologies, and scornful treatment from Melissa. My solution was to sarcastically thank her for the ride, which I'm positive she resented giving me anyway, since she did leave without me. Hit 'em where it hurts, the favor they are reluctantly doing for you. *Sarcastically* Thanks for the recommendation, previous supervisor! I quit!

Sunday greeted me with a world weary groan, my first thought and word of the day being "Fuuck." Too much, too much I'm taking in, thinking about detoxes and cleanses and all the commercials that talk about my colon and how it's full of poop and I need to poop that stuff out and so on. So instead of sweating out some of the mess on a bicycle, when I arrived at the locked pedicab shop, it meant nobody could obtain trailers for their bikes. The idea comes up to go to this ridiculous buffet somewhere super South that has all-you-can-eat every kind of Asian food, crawfish, quesadillas and pizza, and a pile of desserts for around $15 including tip. Now putting nearly two pounds of greasy, mid grade quality food in you is the way to snub your toxicity. The five of us who went sat there for almost two hours weebling around in our seats about how full we were, praising the deliciosity, and struggling to throw shit coffee on top of the garbage piles inside of us. Ah, breakfast, you chameleon.

I'm alternately distressed and delighted at the addictive nature of the random texts I had been trading with Miranda, and I tried to sustain this little trade of information while watching the healthcare debate over the internet on C-Span when she asked me what I was doing. This was the ONE TIME I watch C-Span and someone actually asks what I'm doing. The honest answer seems sarcastic anyway. "What are you doing?" "Well, I'm really into this debate on C-Span" "Yeah...you have someone else over there, don't you? No, it's cool, I get it, buddy. Have a nice life." "No really! I'm interested in the future of healthcare! Don't hang...up. Damn." So suddenly, I was getting ready to go meet Miranda with her two friends at some Mexican joint, and hoping I don't suck at first impressions when I get there. I walked in a little late and grab the introductions and end up getting along pretty well with her friends. The one guy reminds me a lot of Charlie from "Always Sunny..." so talking to him about anything entertained me. It was decided that a dance party should follow at Miranda's apartment, and I'm down-what the hell do I have going on Monday that's going to prevent me from that? We go and drink PBR and Lonestar, and Miranda busts out this party kit with these clay sticks that we all make into funky cool-ass glasses, and we're doing anything we can to look ridiculous and having juvenile fun with the contents of Miranda's suitcase. Miranda's friends ducked out gracefully, leaving us alone. And I guessed that after that it was starting to become a thing...

Statistics:

2 pedicab shifts on a trailer bike
$450 for ten hours of work during SXSW
17 beverages on the 17th of March, St. Patrick's Day
1 bagel
75 minutes spent waiting for my break-in dork to arrive
8-10 new cities added to the travel itinerary
$5 for a PBR tallboy at Beauty Bar during SXSW
$5 for two massive tacos at Whole Foods
4 parties I RSVP'd for that were free that I didn't attend to

Definitions:

spongy office-brain
fuel tanks-stomachs

Drinks from...

Day 69 -Nick, Kyle, Priya

388 Single Wide IPA @ home
389 Saint Arnold's Elissa IPA
390 Half pitcher of Live Oak Seasonal @Alamo Draft House
391 Lonestar @Shangri-La
392 Lonestar
393 PBR @Brixton

Day 70

394 Single Wide IPA @home

Day 71

395 Saint Arnold's Elissa IPA @home
396 Shiner Bock @Rooftop
397 Shiner Bock
398 Shiner Bock
399 512 IPA @Gingerman (thanks Chad!)
400 Live Oak IPA (Chad)
401 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA (Chad)
402 Heineken @Rain
403 Vodka Drink @Kasbah

Day 72 St Patrick's Day

404 Irish Iced Coffee @Halcyon
405 Irish Car Bomb @Little Woodrow's
406 512 IPA
407 Guinness
408 Shiner Bock
409 Stash IPA @Dog and Duck
410 Half a free Guinness
411 Gin and Tonic @Maggie Mae's
412 7&7
413 Shot of Early Times @East Side Pedal Pushers
414 Lonestar @ Irongate
415 PBR @Brixton
416 Starry Night shot
417 Estrella lager @East Side Show Room
418 Estrella Lager
419 I think it was a Stone IPA @Shangri La

Day 73

420 Negro Modelo Especial Shandy @Chad's
421 Lone Star @Red Devil Shop
422 Lonestar @Touche
423 PBR

Day 74

424 Bridgeport IPA @home
425 Breckenridge 471 double hopped IPA @Thunderbird
426 Single Wide IPA @home
427 Lonestar 16 oz
428 RealAle/Long Island Iced Tea @Rio Rita
429 Boulevard IPA @Jackalope
430 PBR Tall Boy @Creekside
431 Tecate
432 Guinness @Shangri-La
433 Lonestar
434 Bridgeport IPA @home
435 Bridgeport IPA

Day 75

436 Fireman's 4 @Red Fez
437 Anchor Steam
438 PBR @Beauty Bar
439 Heineken @Emo's
440 Shiner Bock @Melissa's Office
441 Shiner Bock
442 Shiner Bock
443 High Life @Red Devil Shop
444 High Life
445 High Life

Day 76

446 Half a High Life, Half a Live Oak Amber @Red Devil Shop
447 Bridgeport IPA @home
448 512 IPA @Trudy's
449 512 IPA
450 PBR @Miranda's
451 Lonestar
452 Lonestar
453 PBR

Whew, that was hard to get down. And that's a lot to look at. I give myself a break in the next week when I start working for the US Census.

Of Beans and Drunk Drivers

2010-04-02T12:19:00.001-07:00

Days 62-68

The more I do this, sit down and write, the more I feel like this is becoming an important introspective process. It's way more than documentation, but it's clearly turning into a purge of the things I never vented, the sentences I always wanted to write. It's also becoming a venue for my growing indecision about how I want to proceed with my trip and my life. I like the travel, I'm thirsty for new stuff and I'm also growing very comfortable with the idea of being unattached to anything, and yet I also like the thought of growing some roots for a little while here and there and the next place and being able to say two years from now, "When I lived there..." I'm seriously considering changing my itinerary.

Jo and I did the Facebook thing on our smartphones the night we met, and so on Sunday after having returned Chad's car keys and described to him where I parked his car with the Brit in the backseat, I stared my hangover away on the computer, facebook chat enabled. The textual flirtation began and in the streamers of our conversations the night before, it came out that I'd never been to the Alamo Draft House, and there was a film showing Monday about TJ and Dave, some world class improvisers out of Chicago, and the way their partnership developed. Jo was in, so we made it happen.

There isn't much to mention about the event. I find that the Alamo Draft House is a cool idea, but as someone who is frequently critical of service and the merits of who is serving me, I find adding table service to the affair of watching a movie is something that only adds annoyance to my experience. Either way, it is nice to have beers and a burger while watching a flick. It was a good movie, the director was there afterwards, and people got to ask some questions, so that was neat, but I really wanted to asked TJ and Dave questions, and they were mysteriously absent. Must be busy. Jo and I flirted a little, but it was not the same kind of liquid splashing from Saturday. It was stiff, but fun, and I was selling her on playing video games at Shangri-La, but she forgot to pick her roommate up at the airport or something. It seemed like a really good excuse except if you are going to make that excuse, you don't invite me out to poker the following night, so I took it to the check-out counter, because I was gonna buy it.

The next day it was gorgeous. I started sending off texts to the phone numbers I had. I got only a few responses, and none of them wanted to or were available to toss the disc. GRAAAA! I really wanted to get out and run around a little. I got weak, and I texted Layne. She was all about a toss and that elated me, and she actually wanted to hang out, so I convinced myself that she isn't all that bad. I went over to her house with my disc and she suddenly thought it was a good idea to go swimming down at Barton Springs. She gathered her stuff, and her dog whose real name I forget, but she constantly referred to as Pooter because the dog loved to lick its own vagina, and we got into her mom-bomb Ford Escort wagon to drop by my place to nab my swimming trunks.

It took way too long to actually get to Barton Springs, but when we did get there, we went down to the side where you don't have to pay to hang out. I learned that the water is 67 degrees all year round. It's a stunning place and not too deep and as warm as Boston Atlantic water ever really gets, so Texan complaints of the water being too cold are laughable to me, but I guess my tune might be a little more country if I grew up on fire throughout the months of May, June, July, and August. There were over 70 days of 100 degree heat last summer. I'm hoping for something a little bit more mild while I'm around.

I took my shirt off to reveal my "sweater" and "bat wings" of body hair, and thought that people have got to expect me to be hairy with this beard, and if Layne doesn't like it, then she's not worth the time. These are the same types of insecurities I assume everyone is stricken with, and for me it is about body hair, but I'm learning to accept that I'm a furry animal. Layne didn't care, she was more concerned about falling out of her swimsuit, since she was experience the birth control cup-bump, a signal, dare I say a road-side flare to me that I didn't immediately pick up, but should have seen for the obvious message that she had only recently started birth control and so recently was regularly having sex. Eeeeeh. Blinded by beauty I guess, but fortunately, not completely blind, but only legally blind, because I could still see the general shape of things, and I was staying skeptical. I get lucky in many things, but it's not usually with women. On our way back she tells me she likes me "in that way". I didn't say much about it, I have learned a lot about shutting up recently, and how it makes people think, so I just smiled. We went out for dinner and I'm craving kimchee something fierce, so I directed us to this place I remember reading about named Koriente, and end up footing the check and not getting any kimchee. Later she kisses me and thanks me for a lovely date. We go back to her place to hang out and she posts up on the couch. Her dog tries to wedge itself between us and eventually gives up to bark bark bark about it until Layne puts the bark collar on her. Pooter knew what this meant and shuts right the fuck up. I loved that collar. I wanted one of those for humans. Maybe for Layne. She put on some terrible shows about fucking beans or something, honest. She started telling me about how she loves beans and I could honestly give less than a shit to learn about beans, there's nothing funny about watching beans get processed through a factory, I swear I hope to drink the things I learned from that show right the fuck away. This is when I received a text from Jo about playing poker. Time to make a break for it. I began to lay the groundwork. "Layne, I made plans, I have to get going soon," and, "Hey I gotta meet my friends." She starts asking me to stay. She sends me text messages from right next to me asking me to stay. It's getting pathetic now. I told her I would if it wasn't the first time we were hanging out. She makes me wait to send me asinine picture messages of snapshot captures she's taken of her iPhone home screen, or other random photos. There was even a Magritte painting somewhere in the parade of sad, time sucking diversions. I wrenched myself from the quagmire. God, waiting in line to purchase the beer I brought to the poker game was more entertaining than that show about beans, and the conversation that accompanied it.

I won $8 in poker. It was a fun group for the game. I really got to mock Jo pretty good on her poker skills, and it was over pennies, really, but it was kinda funny when she got cleaned out. I bluffed a lot of hands, but next time I would just play tight on these kids. They play way too many hands, and I let their pattern affect me. Reflections. I took my winnings and ate like a king afterwards at Taco Cabana. A man there was speaking to himself, which made me feel like it might be OK to actually yell at the salsa bar this time. Once again, I begrudgingly declined to initiate that one sided argument.

On Wednesday I spent a lot of time blogging, and killing errands. I didn't feel too hot, but remembered that there was an improv jam at the New Movement Theatre. I went to play, and it was fun to improvise again, but the participating crowd here was full of amateurs who were really good at destroying scenes. A lot of what I've learned in improv training was trampled here, and anything I did to progress a scene's sequence was just as easily destroyed by someone coming into a scene that started to make sense and flailing their arms like a cartoon. I silently wished for them to fuck themselves and played along.

I talked to some of the resident improvisers at the theatre and found them to be very nice, and despite being tired and a little grumpy, I stuck around to watch the next show, which surprised me in how skilled they were. They put on a very good show. Some local blogger was there to plug the show as "a thing to do" in Austin for her 365 thing to do in Austin blog. To inspire the improvisers, she went up on stage and talked about her dating life and some embarrassing things that had happened to her, and how much of an idiot she was for the way she dated some manipulative liar-prick for way too long. As if I needed a reason to disrespect her terrible decision making, I looked at her blog and saw that one of her "things to do" was to take a pedicab ride. In the description of this "thing to do" she said that pedicabbers would take you across the city for $5. No. No they won't. Not in this country. She's one of those hot girl rides who thinks its a privilege for the pedal monkey to take a lovely lady such as herself. I say that she sucks at life and blogging. Thankfully, I don't think that many people read her blog. Yes, the irony of this statement is clear to me.

The sun shone down and put a solid 75 degrees of Farenheit in my neighborhood, so once I became prepared to exit my lovely little ghetto a little after noon on a Thursday, I hesitated. Ahh, it sure did relax me to be in that sun, so I pulled out one of the plastic chairs we have on our concrete walkway that doubles as the foundation for the house and placed it in the sun on the walkway to the front door. There I sat for a few minutes, soaking in some rays, barely capable of the effort required to observe the things around me, incapacitated by the pleasure that swallowed me atop this factory made plastic seat. My car is parked on the street since the driveway got loaded up with everyone else's wheels last night, and I considered pulling the car in off the street, but decline my own offer deeming it futile since I'll leave as soon as I muster the gumption. I watch my young female neighbor enter a large green Dodge Caravan. She begins to back out of her driveway, doing so very slowly, methodically, a deceivingly careful pace. Her exit is straight back and headed towards my car. I thought in very clear words to myself, a sense of trust imbued in them, "She's not gonna hit my car," but she keeps going and pushes her oafish tank into my passenger side door, making my car tilt. Jumping up, I growled in admirable diction, "You fucking asshole," and ran to the point of impact. She doesn't speak English, she's unlicensed, and the piece of shit isn't even insured. She and her sister or cousin try to bargain with me and say let's wait until her father gets home, but I shake it off and call the cops. I've seen "settlements" like this placation screw people before so the law has got to get down here. I called the cops three or four times to be reminded that officers were dispatched based on priority, and I remembered I lived on the East Side. We waited for what ended up being an hour and twenty minutes. I could have watched a movie. Instead, I argued with the girl's sister or cousin about how she shouldn't leave the scene of the accident because then they would have bigger problems that just me. The English speaking one kept reiterating to me that they were gonna have to leave in 30 minutes anyway, and I kept telling them that it was a very bad idea. Thick people are obstinate and don't care to abide by the social constructs humans have created to maintain order, so this fact saw the offender get back into her van to attempt to run her errand. I was prepared to escalate this conflict to the point where I was going to stand in the way of her vehicle on the public road in my own little version of Tiannamen Square, except I wasn't fighting Communism, but stupidity. It was for her own good that I risked my life, but before things could go CNN on us, the cops serendipitously arrived. A full report was filed, and three tickets were issued to my neighbor: Unlicensed Driver, Uninsured Driver, and my favorite, Unsafe Backing. I felt for a few moments like I would somehow be in trouble like when I got picked on to the point of violence in middle school. Why would you suspend the poor kid who got goaded into a fight? How much can you take? On this day, I liked how fairly the real law treated me when I sized it up to my old principal, Ron "Dickface" DePace. I'm sure he was a very nice man.

I called the insurance company and explained things to them. I learned that in my bare minimum Texas coverage, I'm covered for uninsured motorists with a $250 deductible. They sent an appraiser over the following week to look at my car and estimate the damage. He was a perfectly pleasant fellow and we chatted for a good while as he observed the dent in my sweet baby that was magnificently placed partly on the passenger door and partly on the front quarter panel. Two separate pieces to replace, twice the labor, and going for a grand total somewhere beyond the neighborhood of $900. Wow! That dent technically totaled my car, which ultimately will result in a Liberty Mutual payout of the value of my car minus $250, essentially a $900 reward for calling the law into the picture. I think it was Jesus who said, "Love thy neighbor."

My car makes this sound now like a window is always just cracked a little. I'll complete my trip with a few extra decibels, I guess.

That evening, I invited Layne out to the social cycling event, and when we met up at the Scoot Inn, she was ready to ride a race, not cruise and chat, so this meant underdressed, and riding a bike that was not conducive to a fun little cruise, and a healthy dose of whine. Her being there really spoiled the fun, let me tell you. I felt like I was watching a show about beans all over again. So, when in the middle of the ride, she wants to go get food and go back to her place, I feel like its a good idea because I'm annoyed at being around all these cool people and feeling bad about socializing since it is becoming very clear that she is socially awkward and very self-involved, shoving aside normal conversational patterns to stage her windy, monotonous stories. Yes, get me out of this place.

We took a painstakingly slow ride away from the popular route because Layne's knee was hurting very badly, and she made sure I knew about it. We both wanted food so we attempted patronizing that damned taco truck on South Congress where I had those magnificent drunk tacos that one raging night. Thanks be to the knees of Jesus, it was actually open this time-I'm 2 for 7 on trying to go to this taco stand and actually get tacos, and one of those times ended up with me getting slammed by an SUV on my dejected, 6th Street sausage substituted ride home. We found success, the bright spot on my night! Delicious al pastor from a truck, you make boring blondes irrelevant!

After the meal, we took a bus back to her place with our bikes on the bus bike rack. Every bus in Austin has a bike rack on the front, a cue I think Boston should take. We got back to her place and it was more of the same as last time. I had mentioned that my heat was off so she invited me to stay over, but it ended up being in this neutered sort of fashion where I was there, but only to keep her company because she needs her voice to land on something that's not electronic or an animal. My frustration grew to the point where I needed to lay it all out for her. We had a talk and I basically called her out on leading me on, and she apologized and skirted and said she invited me to stay over since my heat wasn't on, a detail she learned after she extended this offer. How convenient. I decided to tell her that I'd take my chances in my Texas-cold apartment, when actually plotting an escape to the tavern meetup for the end of the social bike ride. On my way out I remembered that I had left my sunglasses in her car when we had gone to Barton Springs. I mentioned to her that I could grab them tomorrow. She insisted she could get them for me immediately, something of a surprise considering how sedate she had just been for about an hour. She handed them to me and as I mounted my bike while she repatriated her apartment, she shouted after me, "Well at least it wasn't a total waste!" She was right, I love my XGames sunglasses, it's $6 I'd really prefer not to spend again. I hope those tacos gave her terrible indigestion.

Kyle Duncan Graham and his girlfriend Priya were set to arrive in Austin, TX for South by Southwest, which will be referred to as SXSW from now on. I picked him up at the airport and we proceeded to conquer an errand to repair my car-struck bicycle. I had obtained a fork from a pedicabber here in Austin that I had met and lent some Underarmor to during the inauguration of Barack Obama. When I recognized him and mentioned it, he asked me if he had given it back and was I here to reclaim it. It was an adorable guilty conscience moment, and he very kindly offered me the component in reference.

Post errand, I took Kyle directly to Rudy's Barbeque and General Store. We ordered a great deal of mouth watering meats from the friendly folks working there who greeted and welcomed us loudly once they found out it was our first time there and that Kyle hailed from Seattle, as did I by simple association. This place is kinda famous around here, notably for its barbeque sauce, which, after I mentioned my visit there, heard from various sources that, "their sauce is so good you can drink it." At least four individuals independent from social connection to each other did mention it.

Kyle and I took an adventurous and scenic drive through places we were lost in and re-routed through on our way to obtain a coffee at Mozart's. We were both struck by how many of the houses were long, single leveled structures, more fitting of an elementary school than an upscale habitation, which these most certainly were, based purely on the area where they were plotted. The coffee was great, but the view out at Mozart's was better. I mention this otherwise uneventful trip because on our way back, we hit some gnarly traffic, rush hour mixed with SXSW influx. We had to be at the airport by 6 so Kyle could see his currently long distance honey at the earliest and most romantic movie moment possible. I took my knowledge of the city and its thoroughfares and put it to the test. I eschewed the MoPac expressway parking lot for a chunky, but steady Cesar Chavez cruise across town to 35, slightly jammed as well, but moving, and cut corners in lanes only used by informed drivers, and exits only taken by secret agents. We made the airport with time to spare, and Austin Bergstrom is starting to become a place of great excitement and contention for me.

Brooke, the person who held responsibility for the housing situation I ended up in also ended up temporarily being my employer. since I was encumbered with the licensing process for obtaining a pedicab chauffer's permit in Austin, I looked for other opportunities for employment with the U.S. Census and my neighbor's "Tipsy Taxi" business. The Tipsy Taxi is a service that delivers a sober driver to your car to safely drive your drunk ass home. It costs a little bit more than a cab, and you are probably going to tip generously since you are too hammered to operate your vehicle. My roommate, Nick works with them, or had at the time I started. This Friday was going to be my first night of work. After taking care of paper work, I was told I'd be partnered up with Katie, the married girl with two children in an open marriage that Nick bones with regularity and self-loathing. She's nice, but nothing exciting as far as company goes, like dry toast to breakfast. We got along just fine, though I think I was latently annoyed the entire time we worked because I was thinking about the massive cash I could be raking in pedicabbing SXSW, or the outrageously fun time I imagined I could otherwise be having if I didn't need to be sober. This might have come across in my demeanor. I plodded through it, mostly waiting around at my house until a call came in. There were only two calls this evening, one being a guy who just got a little too hammered after work and needed his van back at home to head of to work again the next day. He thanked me profusely for driving and gave me a $16 tip on my first tipsy taxi fare. It certainly was a promising start, but it ended up as one of only three calls we got that night and I didn't pocket more than $30 out of the evening. I pouted silently that I'd rather spend $100 on good times rather than work and make dick for money, which I can do by jerking off. It felt like I had gone rather low.

Saturday rolled around and there was another social ride to kick off SXSW with a free party afterwards. I pedaled stag once again, figuring the social aspect might net some new connections. Not this time. I experienced a different energy showing up for the ride. It smacked of cliqueishness today, but I was here to ride and get a modicum of exercise since I've been relegated to motor vehicles for the time being. Since Cairo suffered her injurious yellow impact, I've piloted my roommate's beast around, with it's poorly lubed, skipping chain, and the "circus seat", a seat post in two parts that allowed the saddle one sits on to spin. Novel for doing some flanking and upright sideways crunches, and handy for a visual gag (hey lookit this! Mah seat is ca-razy!), but essentially giving the human in power the opportunity to sit and spin, a demeaning expression that I now embodied. In place of my dear Cairo, this monstrosity in its state augmented the discomfort I sensed in the park before the ride.

The ride occurred at a slightly accelerated pace in comparison to typical Thursday night rides, a whopping two of which I'd experienced. There was an edge on for everyone, not sanded down by enough drinks to lubricate the gears of social interaction, and the only person I really connected with was that hungry girl I offered half my protein bar to, and that interaction ended about as quickly as she ate it. In solitude, I looked forward to the end of the ride, knowing that I could have a couple of beers there before needing to be a Tipsy Taxi, and eat what I expected would be free food that I ended up paying for. It all ended at Mellow Johnny's, Lance Armstrong's Austin bike shop for a half-assed dance party sponsored by Google with their new bike maps, Gowalla, and what I saw as a lame attempt to try to get me to buy stuff. I scored a t-shirt and a beer opener from Google, so I guess that counts for something. God, it's incredible to me how important I find social connection, and there wasn't really a conversation worth a damn. If someone told me what I'd get out of that ride was what I ended up with, I think I'd have stayed at home and drank a beer on my front porch, eyeballing my neighbors in the sun. I did however drink a Texas beer in the Texas State Cemetery, so that made me feel pretty alive.

Before returning to the exciting world of Tipsy Taxi, I caught up with Kyle and Priya and their friends for some Korean Barbeque, finally getting my kimchee fix. This is one of those run down joints that does things well, and it had this conveyor belt on one side of the restaurant with slowly passing sushi to tempt the patrons of the bar. The dishes were color coded for cost, but nothing was stopping someone somewhere else along the conveyor belt from defiling the meal I could potentially have, but I suppose this is true of restaurant kitchens across America, and this is the trust we are trained to have. I sometimes have thoughts of complicated public meltdowns, damming the streaming flow of normal social order. How easy it would be to orchestrate a disaster by obstructing the enter, order, eat, pay, exit cycle by firing off a few haymakers at the lazy sushi that paraded before my eyes. Better yet, my fists would send delicious fishy projectiles at our compatriot consumers on the other side of the belt, perhaps inflicting modest amount of annoying pain. "Ow, tuna," I imagine them exclaiming, even though I feel like the real words would be something in Korean or Japanese, a thought I toss back and forth inside to term either racist or realist. This gives way to mentioning to Kyle the creative way I'd conceived to cause havok, and we laugh because we won't, but the thought carries pretty high stakes. Would they call the cops? Could we get away with it and just leave? I'll put this one in my pocket for the Zombie Apocalypse.

Back at the Tipsy Taxi, we end up at Katie's place tonight so she can fold some laundry or something. I nap there for two or three hours while we don't get any calls for work. She puts some white noise on for me, rain, and I decipher the pattern of sounds and locate one particular recurring raindrop, and wish I had the energy to follow through on my urge to switch it to the beach. When we do get a ride, it's with these three girls who were at a Chippendale's type place, checking out strange cocks. Some girl is getting married and she is out on a sort of bachelorette party. We get into her car and we have the chatty bachelorette, a sleepy emo looking girl, and the big girl who is way over quota. We got on the road with Katie following me in her SUV to pick me up once I drop off the drunks. The over-loaded girl in the seat directly behind me is queasy. She needs to puke. I started to pull over, but the bachelorette says it's ok as long as the window is open. They find her a bag in time. I hear the rustling of flimsy plastic in 60 mph winds, with the vomit track overlaid. It's not the vomit you always hear, that comical pouring of guts that sets the vocal chords off in ugly patterns, but a subdued and embarrassed whimper, and you can tell she's sorry before she even says so. She ditches the bag of puke out the window and in the rearview, I watch Katie swerve to avoid stepping the rubber into puke, as if it were going to clog her engine or corrode her already strange life. The apologies are unleashed and in the sideview there are chunks and splashes of boot like Jackson Pollack on this nice Honda Accord. Emo girl is still asleep. Big girl feels better. They arrive safely, tip me modestly yet not poorly, and begin to wash the car at 2:30 am. This is the last ride I had with Tipsy Taxi, and in retrospect, if it were my company, I would have named it "The Drunk Drivers."

I have got to get that pedicab license.

Statistics:

80 minutes to receive police assistance in filing a legitimate accident report
3 tickets issued to my neighbor
4 total vans I have seen parked in my neighbors' driveway.
5 total rides I worked for Tipsy Taxi
$63 lifetime earnings at Tipsy Taxi
5 trips to Austin Bergstrom Airport so far
$1130 and change as the Liberty Mutual estimated Texas value of my 1984 Toyota Corolla
17 consecutive days of heat above 100 degrees in Austin last year. I'm intimidated.
$6 saved by remembering where my sunglasses were.

Drinks from...

Day 62

361 Broken Halo IPA @Chad's
362 Broken Halo IPA
363 Broken Halo IPA
364 Stash IPA @ Snack Bar
365 Stash IPA

Day 63

366 Arrogant Bastard @Alamo Drafthouse
367 512 Pale Ale

Day 64

368 St. Arnold's Elissa IPA@ Poorman's Point (Barton Springs)
369 St Elissa IPA @Layne's
370 Ranger IPA @Matt's (poker)
371 Ranger IPA
372 PBR
373 Ranger IPA
374 Ranger IPA
375 PBR
376 Ranger IPA

Day 65

377 Ax Handle Pale Ale @Uncle Billy's Brew and Cue
378 Lonestar @New Movement

Day 66

379 PBR @Scoot Inn
380 St. Arnold's Elissa IPA (during ride)
381 St. Arnold's Elissa IPA
382 Lonestar @Red 7

Day 67

383 Shiner Bock @Rudy's BBQ

Day 68

384 Lonestar @Texas State Cemetary
385 Miller Lite @Mellow Johnny's
386 Ranger IPA
387 Boulevard Single Wide IPA @home

SXSW summary and wrapup next!

The Ticking Timebomb

2010-03-27T16:05:00.000-07:00

Days 55-61

When I'm home, I get so specifically lazy. I don't know what it is, but I just go back into watching cartoons and eating, and playing on the computer, and if my trampoline were still assembled, I'd go out there and just lie down on it. I can drag myself out of any bed in the world, except for the one in my old bedroom, no matter what bed it is, it could be made of hypodermic needles. So when it came time to wake up and visit my grandmother, it was so hard to break my own will and levee, that I intuited a foggy and groggy attitude influencing me, a thing that I believe exists for certain people in specific personal locations. Or maybe I was just beat, I have been getting into all kinds of shit.

We went over to my grandmother's house for lunch, and it is as home is, comfortable, and friendly, and relaxing. I feel really badly about some of the trips home that I take, because I run around and do all this immature stuff and work myself to a point where when I finally arrive at a place that I can relax, I get sleepy and lose my garrulous manner, and it makes me look as if I'm bored, and that is not the case by any means. If you see me sleepy, and losing the will to converse, it is either because you are trying to teach me boring facts, or I'm extremely comfortable with you. I hope that it doesn't come across as selfish, but I suppose for all the conjecture, I'm only battling with myself and know the right answers and right things to do. Thanks for listening. Anyways, I had a lovely afternoon just straight chillin' at ma grandma's, ha!

I would just like to take a moment here to recall a moment I am reminded of that perhaps, may characterize me a little more, for those of you who may read this that don't know me as well as you thought you did. Or it may not, but it is in my head, and I can do this kind of thing on my time.

When Armando Benitez played for the Mets, he had great success, but also several failures, and as many players do, they fade and it becomes hard to give up on them since they still show fleeting moments of excellence. He became kind of known for blowing saves, despite his ability to occasionally shut it down. Later in his tenure with the Mets, his entrance into the game was akin to shaking hands with the opponent, saying, "Good game, we'll get you next time." He got traded or released and the Yankees picked him up. By this point in my fandom, I had started to join Red Sox Nation, and had managed to put that extra stinger into the growing list of reasons my father is disappointed in me. I kid, but he cheers for the evil empire, so the disappointment is mutual. So when one day, I was napping on his couch in his presence, and the Red Sox and Yankees were playing in 2003, the year I was catching the fever. The Yankees were ahead and Benitez came in to seal the deal. Though barely conscious, my body surfed on gentle energy waiting for the inevatable to happen. Benitez was always a ticking time bomb, some times he'd make it to the blast chamber in time, and many times he wouldn't. I was cocky. I said to my dad, "that's the ball game." I can't remember the details, but it was a classic meltdown, and he finally blew it, and the Red Sox won. I raised my hands in victory, eyes closed. The Yankees losing was going to make for a great nap. My dad blacked out the TV in disgust. As he once told me, "It takes ten 'attaboy's' to make up for one 'Awww shit.'"

Time came that I had to leave and make it to the city. Every time I'm in New York City, so many things have to happen. I fall into my old time management pitfalls, and I usually come up short on some meeting or another. Not enough time here, wish I could stay, but... It's too high energy, I get stressed out there and that causes me difficulty in regulating myself. I went to see my pops and his lady, and left after too short a visit, but at least got it in, and then made movement for Duncan's place. We are writing a screenplay together and had been planning this writing meeting for a few weeks, so it was a priority. We did a little catching up, and when we finally put ourselves to it, we started operating on all fours, man. It surprised us both how productive we were for not having worked in so long. We've had entire writing meetings that have amounted to next to nothing, and here, in his new performance space former garage apartment, we jammed out the last quarter of the screenplay in one night whereas the rest has been stretched over two years! I guess we already knew how it would end, but it took surpassing a few mental blocks and rejecting a few good ideas before we seized on the ones that made us both erupt with excitement and laughter at how right it felt to write that thing. It went a little late, and it was worth celebrating, so we took his sweet dog Theo for a walk/beer run in the delightfully sketchy DUMBO night, and returned to his pad for some self-congratulating. This completed task brings us about 65% of the way there, with 80% of the creative work done. *Dances like broken robot*

The next day we tested it out on Duncan's girlfriend and sister as an audience. We were looking for holes in the sum, and seeing if we had as strong a narrative as we were assuming we did, and the results were positive. We aren't done, but we've got a winner. It came time to get up to Boston, I had a few affairs to settle.

I expected to crash at my old house in Brighton, but I was assuming that the task would be a great deal easier than it proved itself to be. I didn't remember that I'd have to experience the charm of the MBTA in Boston considering I had the old Timebomb sitting in the pedicab shop. The Timebomb is the name we gave to my beat up, rusted single speed bike that developed this ticking noise in its drivetrain, and we all expected it to go off at anytime. I instantly imagined arriving, catching quick T connections, and getting to the shop with my two bags in relative haste. Instead, I waited and debated with myself in that old MBTA way about which method of transit would be the most expedient. Forty minutes later, I'm at the shop. I unearthed the Timebomb, lubed the chain, and cursed Shane for not having purchased a new tire to cover the exposed tube up when he had borrowed it for over a month. He actually rode around with tube exposed for well over a month, and replaced the tubes, not the tires. Mechanically speaking, this is fucking idiotic. Whatever, if he rode it around like that for so long, I bet that it would get me to Brighton.

Shane is skinny man. Not to say that I'm fat, but I got a few of the ol' el bee's on him, and I was carrying baggage. I left the shop and took off down familiar West Newton. Not halfway down the first block, I hit a small crack in the pavement, and what had to happen finally did. The tire blew out. You can only put Armando Benitez in the game so many times...I screamed the name of the reason for this. "ShaaaaaaAAAAANNNNE-UH!!" I decided that I could still ride it to Kenmore and catch the 57. Even riding slowly on a flat tire would get me back to Brighton faster than walking. I made it about 3/4 of a mile before I realized I left my goddamned motherfucking laptop in the shop, secured, alarmed, and shut in. So I rode back. I got it. Then I rode back towards Kenmore. It's one of those moments where you have to laugh at yourself for looking so stupid. My ass is burning up in the coat and weighty traveling items, pushing this sad cycle about 5 mph, aware that I'm about as effective as a pack mule riding a seeing-eye pony, but at this point, it's too late-I'm committed to the bit. I finished my precarious ride to Kenmore Square and deliberated for about a minute on where to lock up the Timebomb. I choose a post on the South side of the square to abandon my bastard bike-child, and walk to the bus stop to catch my last leg about twelve minutes later. South Station to 21 Bennett St, 1 hr, 35 min. Kill me, I'm in Boston. At least I have oral surgery and the Registry of Motor Vehicles to look forward to tomorrow.

Oral surgery was kind of a breeze. Sit back and don't freak out that they are poking around on the bones that used to be your teeth, forget that they are connected to your nasal bone structure (which is also fractured and will be fucked with), and don't think about the things they are doing to regenerate gum tissue and graft bone so they can sink screws into your head and anchor teeth on them. Just listen to them teach you about it and pretend it is someone else. Pretend like someone you know is poking at your face to kid around for about an hour, and it's kind of funny because you can't feel it. Also don't fret that it's going to be over a thousand dollars out of your pocket. Money falls out of the sky. It really tells me something about myself and, perhaps if I extrapolate, the world, that I had a better time at Dr. DerKazarian's office than I did at the RMV, trying to return my Mass tags, and I got in and out of the RMV in about 20 minutes.

In order to obtain my pedicab chauffer's license in Texas, I was advised that I needed to procure my certified Massachusetts driving record. I was told I could get it from the Watertown RMV, but was advised that I can only obtain a certified copy, which was what I needed, at the office in Quincy. I took a second to process my oxygen, and said OK, no problem, I'll just nail a Zipcar down. There's an app for that. As it turns out, this app is useless except to make funny beeping noises because it doesn't eliminate the need for a plastic card at all, which I thought it did. Without the plastic card, you cannot open the vehicle, and you cannot proceed with your reservation. What I could have done was tell him my card wasn't working, and they could have opened the car remotely, but they have information protocols, and I can't be trusted. More scrambling for the T. It's about 3:40 and I need to make a big walk out from the N. Quincy T stop by 4:45, so I was scrambling for the T again. I love the stress of being on a corner were you could grab one of three T buses as soon as they showed and make progress, and I got to wear that energy at N. Harvard and Western until the 86, quite possibly the worst of all possible bus lines, rolls by and whisks me to Harvard to swiftly hop the correct red line train to Braintree. He's feelin' the flow, kids.

Only being back in Boston for a short time brought a lot of memories back, and the North Quincy stop was no gentle stroll down memory lane, but more of a necessary barefoot run across painful gravel to get back to smoother surfaces. It was here that I once pathetically and urgently came to try and salvage the relationship I was in with my ex-girlfriend. After ditching out on a scheduled week-long trip to New York with my good friend J, the breakup was overwhelming my ability to enjoy or even do anything. It was one of the hardest emotional experiences I ever went through. It feels strange to mean it when I say I didn't realize how much I had loved her, but I guess how trite that is can be measured against how she was my first love, and you only get good at anything, especially relationships, by learning from failures, and as an aside, I feel like I'm getting good at a lot of things, relationships included. It was here that, for the first time in our relationship, I had come to meet her at work two days after our official breakup, and we walked her long, run-down Dorchester walk to the North Quincy T-stop and waited in a shelter for the train. I waited near the same shelter to return on this day. We had talked all the way to her exit stop, and I felt better just to see her. I felt like a delicate house again where I previously resembled a chaotic pile of dirty chopsticks. Memories spur other memories and I involuntarily summoned the turbulent broken up period where friendship was a lofty goal that only fooled us back into heart rending passionate sex, only to get rejected all over again, and the fastest six mile bike ride I ever cycled on the heaviest bike I ever owned when she called, crying, at my doorstep. And the killing of it all. And why I was in Boston at all. All this coursing through me while waiting for the T after having successfully attained my driving record to help myself pedicab in Austin. I like to play the sequence of events game. D happened because of C and C because of B and B because of A. You can really pick out the major moments of your life with this game.

When one visits a former hometown, one is burdened with the unfortunate task of plucking out only a few out of potentially many people you'd like to see. My solution to this is usually to introduce everyone to each other in one location, and though not always a winning scheme, it played on this evening where I managed to get Sokly, Nate, Shea + Damien, and Kate to Deep Ellum for some sleepy beers and catching up. It's a fluttering, serene, doping high to settle down with a few important people you haven't seen in a while, and no amount of exhaustion in me could ever stop me from finding energy for this to be, like when they find dehydrated people in the desert that somehow still have tears to cry for the joy of their rescue.

Man, I have stories from this trip and anywhere I go I can entertain with one or two, and so with this realization, I'm more clearly identifying things in myself that are carved out into my personality. I tell stories. I choose words carefully, but start the sentence without knowing how it will end. I speak some sentences slowly because of this. I reflect people and cultures, absorb and emanate. I have patience in a grand scheme and frustrate quickly for small stuff, and am training my mind not to. I'll always be a New York driver, so I'll always speak to other cars. As George Carlin ingeniously discovered, "The amount of an asshole a person is is directly proportionate to the distance away from you they are at the time you discover that flaw." In searching for the proper clip, I found the wrong relevant clip of George Carlin on cars. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8beHUQbIC8A&NR=1 One of the true masters.

I sprang forth from my old Bennett bound leather couch, and made Logan airport with smooth connections. I had a swollen mouthed attempt at breakfast via the awkwardly positioned Dunkin' Donuts that was wedged into the space between a few columns. It's almost too airportish to actually be in an airport, more like in a movie of an airport, but not "The Terminal" because that movie sucked. I mashed a few hash browns into my gullet and got on the plane, relieved to be leaving the cold, the hollow stalactite buildings of Boston, the Timebomb in Kenmore, my dating history on the red line, my stifled desires on Bennett Street. I took a half look at my neighbor as we left the ground, looked out the window and the gray-blue runway, shut the window and teleported to Austin, mellow and refreshed on arrival.

The whole time I was away, I though about Wednesday coming, being back in Austin, and the idea that on that evening, I would be hanging out with the blonde beaut at drag queen bingo, as we had discussed when I broke it down that I made plans to watch people speak words quickly to rhythm. I talk a lot about whatever is on my mind, and I was thrilled and cynically amused that I dropped into Austin and already this hot blonde, as if this place was magic and my palatability to the other sex magically changed in this sphere of weirdness. I went ahead and told my mom and my grandmother and my father and his girlfriend about her and what I knew and that she is an escort. Yup. She seemed to be really down with it, and really have a handle on her business, and wasn't about getting paid to fuck, cause, you know, neither was I, I really can't afford to fuck like that, but if someone needed beautiful company capable of charming, she could oblige. I'm no moron, I wasn't ready to believe that it's so easy, I've learned that lesson the hard way in remedial lesson learning, having failed out of the course "Lesson Learning 101" at Community College, also having since TA'd the course at Yale, while having illicit trysts with a few of my hotter, struggling students. Perhaps, my metaphor has said too much? My point here is that I'm not ready to get taken for a ride, but it's nice to see high standards yield results, and I was excited about it. So when she flaked out on Wednesday night, I took my roommate to Drag Queen Bingo instead and swore off the blonde stuff for good. Winning a set of fake mustaches and sideburns can go a long way in forgetting flaky hot girls.

The weekly social ride was set to happen on this Thursday night, so I got ready to go, and couldn't really get anyone else to task, so I rode down by myself. On my way, I caught someone else and ventured the guess that they too were going to the Scoot Inn to meet up for the ride. Friendly enough, we introduced ourselves and she led me there. Damn, that was a lot of bikes. I let some intimidation guide my actions, but soon I realized there was a lot of camaraderie and that anyone could really talk to anyone. I picked out some guy who said something or other about Boston, and I perceived an opening. It turns out, as I am at times an overzealous Red Sox fan, we had met previously when I commented and complimented this guy on his Sox hat while we temporarily biked together along Barton Springs Road. His girlfriend, also on that ride, grumbled about all the transplants that invade Austin. We laughed when we realized we had met, and he bragged that for all the complaints of transplants these Texas girls might have, they love an East Coast boy. She wrinkled her nose and smile-frowned at this. He then made out with his girlfriend. I took heart in this.

This interaction opened me up to the spirit of the ride. Before the ride began, while unlocking my bike, a guy offered me a shot of his "Feckin' Whiskey". I chatted with them for a while and got the digits of one of the guys because I wanted to catch up to the end of the ride since I intended to peel off and meet up with Chad for a bit. Conversation along this cruise is fun and fleeting, and a little bit like what I imagine speed dating to be, except with more speed, and it's OK to talk to the other speed-dating guys in between dates. This ride went all over a dark and sort of creepy East side, into parks, and up and down vacant major thoroughfares, protected by the ride leaders keeping a lookout for cars and upholding order towards traffic signals, and the sheer number of bikers. Some dude had a giant speaker hooked up to his bike on a pull cart and blared some jams for everyone, another guy had a similar rig with a large trash can on it so everyone could throw away all the PBR and Lonestar cans they had tucked into their messenger bags. So awesome! It was responsible mayhem that stood in stark contrast to Critical Mass rides, where it seems to be full of youngsters on ca-ray-zee bikes with anger issues that are only assuaged by this excuse to rage and wave U-locks in a threatening fashion at people who own cars for legitimate reasons. Even though I was the victim of a hit and run by a yellow SUV later that very evening, an infuriating and painful experience in its own right, I still firmly believe there is no reason to foster such outrage. Polite organization can achieve the same ends or better without incensing the non-biking population and reflecting poorly on those of us who do not need to kick your car door in for your internally combusting, oblivious ignorance. One day, it's gonna be too much and somebody could die. Armando Benitez.

I returned from meeting up with Chad to have a beer at the snack Bar and one at that Ego's place. I sang a song, and got some Wisconsin girl's number based on how she is a Packers fan, and then went to meet the end of the social ride at Creekside Lounge. Nothing special, really. I had been collecting phone numbers in an attempt to broaden my scant social network in Austin, and like a farmer at harvest time, had more than I knew what to do with, except I wasn't going to sell the phone numbers at a farmer's market. OK, so my similes aren't always perfect, they are like your boss, I hope-qualified and makes a point. BOOM!

Before I reveal this next episode, let me first apologize to my mother for not telling her, I knew she'd freak, and I was just fine anyways. So here goes...

So I closed this place out and started riding home. I didn't have far to go at all, I think the globally positioned estimate is 1.4 miles. I got up to E 12th street and mind you, I'm in my neon green pedicab hoodie, so seeing me is not terribly difficult. Additionally, my reflector under my seat is not obscured at all. I make it past Chicon Street, so I'm feeling pretty good about not getting shot and robbed at this point. I'm faster than any crackhead running after the crack truck, so we're pretty much home free. Down a hill and up a hill and down a hill and left is all that's left, and that should take about a minute and ten seconds in real time. I'm on my way up this hill, in the bike lane that starts as soon as one turns onto E 12th Street, and a car is coming up behind me. I don't think much of it, I'm visible and in the bike lane, but it rolls up next to me and here is where time slowed. I watch this yellow behemoth getting closer so I start braking as quickly as you pull your hand away from fire, but there's not enough time, not even in slow time, and it's turning directly into me. I'm hit. The back wheel of the car stomps on my front wheel and now I'm flying. I'm not completely clear on what happened next, but I like to test my powers of deduction, and here's what I've come up with: With my trajectory going forward, and my arms bracing myself for impact, the stop vaulted me forward a good deal slower than a clean hit. My feet came out of my pedal straps rather easily, though I could tell by the muscle ache in my one shin that there was some resistance-a good thing considering it was another factor in the decrease of my speed towards the SUV in my path. The sum of this force versus resistance put my other shin at handlebar level, cracking it and scathing some skin off, missing the SUV entirely as it continued on. I landed, I think after considering my injuries, by breaking my fall with my right knee and left hand, a stiff neck keeping me a free thinking individual, but not full out preventing facial impact a little bit back of my left eye, towards the ear, but so, so close to blindness and extreme pain. I think I went unconscious. The next thing I saw, through astonished pain, was a man looking down at me. He was black with a chinstrap beard, a hat, I think. He had a slight drawl, and he said this: "I can tell you what happened for five dollars." Can you believe it? I was furious even though I ought to have paid for the details, but I sent him off in a very New York way saying, "Are you serious? Get the fuck outta here!" I called 911, a cop came, she asked if I wanted an ambulance, I declined. With the front wheel now a taco stabbed by a broken fork, I walked my bike home on the back wheel, my shoulders starting to scream with pain, the whiplash setting in already. I timidly crawled onto the couch like a domesticated pet trying to die alone, ashamed to be seen, thinking before sleep, "I can't believe this happened." But I guess I have to believe it, these are facts. I now own and religiously wear my bike helmet.

I was immersed in stalking pain, the sharp bolts of it gripping me, dictating my actions, feeling like I was snapping bamboo bones to lift my head. I told Nick what had happened and he was assertive in convincing me to get checked out at the hospital. I didn't know if my insurance in Massachusetts would cover my incident, but I decided that it was less important to be covered and more important to be okay. I think it did get covered, and lucky for me, I had been holding out on my recently prescribed, dental pain related vicodin, and now had a justifiable reason to start popping them again, and a great excuse to catch up on some of my Hulu queue. Fucking asshole made me miss the fun on Friday. Thinking about it, I'm upset that they drove away, but considering I'm still alive and fine, and I can think as clearly as I was before, my anger loses its edge, and I think they were probably drunk and scared and didn't want to go to jail. I find myself sympathizing with them, but I also don't know anything about that person just like they don't know that they didn't manslaughter me with a side of DUI.

On Saturday, even though I had drugs, I hesitated to take them. I researched what I was prescribed by my amazingly beautiful Dr. and didn't like the sounds of the side effects. I only took the vicodin early and rode that out until my muscles loosened up later in the day and gave me a better range of motion. Chad picked me up that evening because I wanted to get out of the apartment, it depressed me to be confined. It was his friend Berto's birthday, and we were going to his party at the Shuck Shack, which I shall heretofore refer to as the Suck Shack because as a bar, I think it sucked. I got into the car Chad introduced me to his friends Jo and Matt. They were drinking 4 Loko, the ridiculously caffeinated malt liquor beverage. Jo mocked me for not drinking any of it, but it was fine, I explained to them what had happened and silently lamented that asshole behind the yellow disgrace that cost me $255 in wholesale repairs to my bike. They finished their 4 Loko's after parking and went in to sit down at the Suck Shack around a table outdoors. I decided I should try to hold back on the drink. Jo mocked me, but I held strong for a while. We were there so long, and the food was absolutely terrible...I caved. IPA, please. I mean come on, you know a place is simply terrible when fries are the most appetizing thing you can put down on the table, and I can wrap my mind around eating all kinds of garbage.

The whole time we are at the Suck Shack, I'm talking to Jo. She's super cool, very attractive, totally Texas and has a FWB thing going on with Chad and I'm down but the conversation is super playful, we are jabbing at each other with pretty healthy cuts, nice beefy insults are flying, and it's clear that we'll get along fine. I'm feeling pinched though considering I don't want to offend Chad by flirting too freely. I proceed with the brand new person bonding resolving not to let it come to anything. This mind is stronger than the one that drinks, though it was not always like this. A former roommate of mine who freely offered, nay, subjected me to therapy, told me that I had an achilles heel and a fatal flaw. Drinking the heel, women the flaw. The person be damned, but I think highly of his ability to recognize and guide others towards a better way, yet I disrespect the manner in which he would thrust his paradigm on everyone inside his vocal radius. These sessions behind me now, the trap arguments now bygones, the differences now moot, I see myself better in situations like what happened at the Suck Shack and all that followed. A younger me might have gone for it, friendship be damned, but this person in 2010 proceeded to tie one on with everyone to the point of potential judgement impairment, and won the KIT award for Keeping It Together. It's an award that I am frequently being nominated for these days, and yes I am aware of the frightening running list of drinks I'm keeping.

We had a large crew that developed, and I don't know what it is, but the young professional class here in Austin somehow slants crazy, I think it might be because they are in many ways outsiders to the real culture of Austin. I was sober so I drove Chad's car over to East 6th Street to go to The Good Knight, an excellent cocktail bar. So I'm about to park Chad's car and one of the girls that has joined our entourage for the evening, the British one, volunteers to stick with me while I park the whip. So I can't always summon the accent, and this time I didn't quite butcher the English accent, but it wasn't great and she did NOT appreciate it. She actually called it really bad (not just pretty bad) and I had to spend a few minutes of damage control on that. OOK, you don't want to just roll with it, fine. Strike one, though. FYI, we're gonna punch out the Austonite female young professional in a later post, but oooohhhh yyyyeeeeahh, they go down swinging.

Inside, the atmosphere was great, the conversation flowed naturally, the male to female ratio kept everybody on their game, and Chad and I bounce well off of each other, so throwing game became effortless. The game throwing actually stopped and turned quip fest. I traded numbers with two of the girls, "bumping" one of them first, which made the other jealous, and we all friended each other on Facebook. Coolyo, new friends, rawk. Berto's crew has caught up to us, escaping the Suck Shack alive, I am pleased to report. Sticking around got a little boring, so the impetus to move started brewing and fermented very quickly into the idea to go dance at Beauty Bar.

We've picked up Melissa, another of these young professionals that Chad knows, and now SHE is the sober one and drives several of us to the bar, parking underneath I-35. Honestly, we ought to have walked, but no mater now, the car is parked. Inside of Beauty Bar, it is a hipster dance party so I helped myself to a PBR. For some reason on this night, I was loving the scene here. My second visit was not so charmed. Only about an hour or so here before it wrapped up and Chad starts leading us off into the downtown concrete. We're going to a karaoke bar. Three of the five of us are bewildered, but follow anyway. Jo bumps into me and brushes, loops arms, all this. Several too many blocks later, we are quickly ushered into a professional looking building, and march up some stairs into a karaoke lounge with private rooms. They put the five of us in a sound proof box and soon a bunch of six packs of Lonestar longnecks show up. Town is where we all went to. Sloppy drunken karaoke to each other melted into an extended five person singalong, sitting and standing. Jo and I sat next to each other for most of it, arms pressed against, touching, though there was plenty of room to have space.

The check got cashed out, and we minus Chad and Jo who cabbed to Chad's, walked back to Melissa's car, or where it should have been. Apparently, there is no parking under the I-35 overpass after 3 am. It's 4:30 am. We ask the attendant or someone just hanging around, and it's clear that her car has been towed. Oops. But here he comes to save the day, some random 60 year old dude in a Dodge Duster. He knows where cars get towed to, in fact, that's why he's here! Just trying to make some unlicensed gypsy livery money. At this late hour, I don't even give a fuck, I'm high on my good fortune for the trip, so I'm ready to hang out with this guy and have him take me home. We haggled for a $20 ride and we all get in to this thing. It's just kind of asinine as a vehicle, it should have died years ago, but we went and dropped Melissa off and then Matt and then me. Matt and I split the cost since Melissa nobly absorbed the towing expense. I talked to the guy a lot and took his number down, noting him as "The Problem Solver". Oh, I'll have more problems in the future, but I don't think I'll ever call that guy again as long as I live.

Statistics:

$24 total on a circuitous ride home in a Dodge Duster
5 iced coffees on completing this post
8 at Austin Java in the latest session
25 days behind in my journaling
20+ phone numbers acquired
$5 Amount that was requested of me immediately after being hit by a car.
3.13 Armando Benitez's career ERA
$18 estimated total spent on the T in a 33 hour period.

Drinks from...

Day 55

324 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale @Dad's
325 Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale
326 Brooklyn Lager @Duncan's
327 Brooklyn Lager
328 Brooklyn Lager
329 Peak Organic IPA
330 Peak Organic IPA
331 Peak Organic IPA

Day 56

332 Corona @some DUMBO taco shack
333 Sierra Nevada @Joey's in Brighton

Day 57

334 High and Mighty Beer of the Gods @Deep Ellum
335 Green Flash IPA
336 Punk IPA

Day 58

337 Live Oak Pilsner @Jo's Downtown
338 Firemen's #4
339 Live Oak Pilsner
340 Lonestar can @home

Day 59

341 Live Oak IPA @Frank
342 PBR can @Scoot Inn
343 PBR can
344 shot of Feckin Whiskey outside of Scoot Inn
345 shot of Feckin Whiskey (somewhere on East side)
346 Busch can in some park
347 Stash IPA @Snack Bar
348 Lonestar @Ego's
349 Lonestar
350 Corona
351 Lonestar @Creekside
352 Lonestar

Day 60

Nothing

Day 61

353 Fleur d'orleans @Suck Shack
354 Stash IPA
355 Hanky Panky @The Good Knight
356 Firemen's #4
357 PBR @Beauty Bar
358 Lonestar @Silhouette
359 Lonestar
360 Lonestar

Next: South by Southwest approaches and I still don't have a pedicab license.

Weird Words From Austin

2010-03-16T12:33:00.000-07:00

I didn't really wake up on the 18th of February, so much as I opened my eyes from shivering, and was reminded that I was in Texas by that giant fucking star I parked in front of. I couldn't make myself sleep anymore, not even with the car turned on, and I feared that, since I occasionally could smell gas when I vigorously pump the gas pedal to help start the mother up, and with the wind as it was, that if I did sleep with it on I'd potentially suffer carbon monoxide poisoning and die, and I certainly didn't want that. Dead on the side of the road at a Texas rest stop. How inglorious, irrational, and ironic as a final resting place. Caffeine.

I sped west on I-10, still no daytime treat, just a lot less deer. There was an accident. I took the service road to avoid it. I pulled over at a gas station to have a little nap. Why do I mention this? They were the most momentous things that happened to me on I-10.

I motored around the outskirts of Houston and got a look at that city from the distance, and from the look of it, I'm not at all disappointed in having skipped it. By this time, I got a call from this Chad fellow who I've never met, but my friend Kyle in LA has hooked me up with him for a place to crash upon arrival. I let him know I'm getting on 77, and I should be there in something like two hours. I get about halfway and need to gas up, and it was kind of time to eat since I vanquished my sad, cold, completely average leftover Thai for breakfast. Well heck, I'm in Texas so I should get some good 'ol bee bee cue! I walk into this place, and it's warm out so I've taken off my track jacket, and I completely forgot that the clean shirt I put on yesterday was the one I sloppily purchased for $5 or $10 in New Orleans that read "FU*K the Colts" with the U being the Colts' logo. I walk up to order without remembering what I'm wearing, and before I get a word out of my mouth, a man in his early 60's greets me with a coppery ribbiting, "Yew doan laaahk thu Cooalts?" I realize immediately that he disapproves of my shirt, and I backpedal on my purchase saying, "Oh this? I don't really care, I was just at Mardi Gras and I bought this for $5" "Mmmmmhmmmmm," he gurgled. It made me ashamed and slightly frightened because I knew that he knew that I was not from these here parts by the way I talked. I thought I might get a talking to until he followed up the thoughtful pause with a resigned, "Whattaya have?" He also didn't like that I ordered way too much and returned to the counter for a to-go box. But I can't blame him. He probably hadn't seen the word "Fuck" intimated in text form for quite a while.

As a stranger, Austin seems to pop up out of nowhere, probably because a lot of Texas is nowhere country. Before you see Austin, it feels like you are in the middle of nowhere. If I were lost and on the phone, I'd say to whoever was on the other end, "The only landmark I have is a cow! There's not even a fence around here! I'm near a road! Help!" And when you get to Austin, there is no overwhelming impression right away, not like I got from Houston, or New Orleans, or Miami, or anywhere, really. You've just arrived. You sort of descend into the Austin cityscape and its American commercialism, but soon the business fronts become interesting. Things seem original, attractive, unfamiliar, and inviting. Care has been taken to artistically design and impress people with no prior knowledge of what goes on behind that street front. I started taking video as I saw the capital building in the distance while I drove north on South Congress. I passed my destination while filming.

First thing to do, like a traveling bum, is park and eat everything I have in all my to go boxes on the hood of my car. Then I got coffee. I dropped into this place "Snack Bar" and I sat down and talked to this girl Kate. She was friendly and welcoming and makes me a really terrible iced coffee, and I hung out for a few minutes and go over to Chad's. I wandered all over the damned complex he lives in to find his apartment and get in and drop my things. I met his roommate Brent and after a brief friendly chat, I realize I needed more food. He told me about some places in the South Congress area so I checked out the bar next door, Doc's. I looked at the menu and it all seemed too expensive and not too appetizing, so after two beers and a weird bro chat with this guy Jeremy who invited me out to a special screening of a movie done by Brother Maynard of Tool. I left for Snack Bar again. I ordered up some food and it turns out, it's all organic and really good. I was also wearing my pedicab hoodie here and a guy there, Ben, mentions to me that he went to Berklee. We talked and discovered a large community of people that we both know, most notably my former roommate Eruch. Suddenly we are buddies and I'm down with like all the kids at Snack Bar, who are all hipsters and musical and whatever, and I think to myself, "cool I found this joint by accident," not yet knowing that Austin is completely full of places like this, and people as friendly as that. I have a few beers there, and one of the girls working feeds me a new one I haven't tried in this sort of pouty flirtation that seemed to get nodded or shaken off by a dude who I think goes out with Kate. It was like that moment where you telegraph to your friend, "I know something about this guy, you do not wanna go down that road," except that guy didn't know me and I don't know why he was being all protective or whatever. I'm not there to confront anyone so I pretended like I didn't know what was going on and continued the friendly chat before going back to Ben's for a beer, then to have real sleep on Chad's couch. So on my first night in Austin, I developed a new network of friends and I hadn't even met my host.

I awoke the next morning with a dark haired man towering over me, introducing himself as he got ready to leave for work. I was bleary eyed and could barely sit up for a handshake, but at least I know what the guy I was staying with looked like now. He promised me the night before that he'd take me out for drinks the whole night to make up for being unavailable the night before. I didn't think it necessary, but he followed through, man. I met him and his friend and coworker Keith up by his place after taking a slice at Mellow Mushroom, and we started by walking to a bar called Lustre Pearl that boasted a huge outdoor space, and horseshoes. They had already been to a happy hour or two so he was a train on the tracks to Tipsytown, TX. At Lustre Pearl, I tried to pay for my drink, but Chad waved me off for making that attempt.

Keith had not yet checked in to his hotel, so we had to go to a hotel called the AT&T Conference Center Hotel, which made me shudder and think of the future where all things are named in such a fashion. Keith's room was on the 7th floor of the hotel, and so when upon arrival we found that the power had gone out in the hotel and that the elevators were out of service, we were told that in the meantime, we should go have a drink at the bar, compliments of the hotel. Music to our ears.

When we got in to the bar, we mentioned what the front desk told us to mention and voila; free booze magically appeared. As we consumed these drinks, and time ticked on, Chad began to go to work on the bartenders, and cajole Keith into exploiting the situation for a great deal more value. He had since traveled up and down seven whole flights of stairs manually, and this made Chad a little upset. If it was Chad in Keith's situation, he'd probably feign severe annoyance and explicitly ask the hotel what they can do for him in compensation for the punitive damages they were incurring. This conversation, and our overall degree of charm with the bartenders led to a great deal more free drinks, some of them being very fine Scotches. They were closing at midnight, but we were the only people tipping these tenders healthily, so that when it was time to close, we stealthily stayed put, and were served up two rounds of shots that went by the name of "Cuntpuncher". No joke. The freebies tallied to seven.

The night spun out of control, I tell you! We went to three more places, and the details go off. The Dog N Duck, Little Willy's, I think (where the motto on their signage for motorists to see states "Come Early, Stay Late, Remember Nothing), and the Kung Fu Saloon with Mortal Kombat III and fatalities all happened, and I lost my dear right bike glove. This glove has been magnetic to my person for so long, it's been lost and found at least three times before this, most notably returning to dear owner after having been left on the T in Boston. It was so sad to see it go, I thrashed around the Kung Fu Saloon for 10 or 15 minutes in disbelief. I complained about it and it's been annoying because there have been several instances since the disppearnce that I've needed coverage for my right hand. I feel like I'll still find it in some asinine place and say AH and dance around like a broken robot in a little circle.

The night ended as Chad had predicted, at the taco truck down the street from him where he purchased two orders of five tacos al pastor for $6 each for Keith and me, just to watch us drunkenly devour them and enjoy that we were having an experience he so revered. They were fantastic, and I made several trips back to that truck in vain, finding its hours to be in terrible discord with my own, and forcing me to a sausage stand on 6th and into friendship with a guy named Aaron who operates the stand. So be it, and good on it. Aaron's sober personality has become a respite into reason when I traverse Austin's version of Fanieul Hall. I have since discovered the actual operating hours of the taco truck.

I got a chance to catch up and actually chill at length with Brian Fahey, a friend from Boston. We toured the east side of 6th for a few hours and it basically turned into a barcrawl of sorts. In an act of raging generosity, he picked up a great deal of my drinks and the cheese plate we split at the East Side Show Room, including my (supposed) 300th drink of the trip. I started absorbing the scene over there and realizing that I liked it very, very much, yes I do.

As an odd job, Chad threw some work at me to paint his office. So I spent odd hours getting in there, rocking out with myself, coating the walls and trying to do the professional job I know I am capable of, as trained by the Biltmore Theatre Props Department on Broadway. Yes, I worked there at one point in my life. It was a weird and fortunate year that has propelled me to this point, playing music and edging the corners of a strange company's test preparation hub late at night, completely self-satisfied, and motivated to do a good job.

For several days, I had been looking forward to seeing Boston band and friends of mine, Pretty and Nice, roll through Austin on tour. I knew I'd have arrived here by then, and thought that I may be feeling rather friendless in a new place and this posed a solution to this problem. I planned on painting a whole lot the day of the show, and I rolled pans and pans of the chalky colors on until it was clear that my priorities weren't straight. I had to go to the show. Sure, I could just go and hang out and then come back and finish the job. It won't take too long at all. I'm nearly done, just slap the second coat on there, first coat there, there, and cover that up.

I took off for the Mohawk, the venue at which they were playing. I had been talking them up all week to the Snack Bar folks. When I walked in to the place, I liked the venue a lot, but I quickly got wind that Pretty and Nice hadn't yet gone on, and weren't going to for a while. This was fine with me because I hadn't envisioned the remaining tasks to be too difficult, so time felt supple. I was identified by Holden (of the band) by my pedicab hoodie, and it was clear that he didn't know I planned on coming/being there, though Jeremy (of the band) did. Holden's excitement warmed me. I found Jeremy and we several, the band, myself, and a few friends of the band, ascended to the upstairs green room to hang out. I met their lady friends and "bumped" iphones with one, and got the other's number the old fashioned way. Woohoo, new friends!

After watching a great, fiery-as-usual set in an unfortunately porous crowd, I assisted in some load out transfer of equipment before the revelation of going to eat at Taco Cabana. I had never been, but anything taco is up my alley. I piled into the van for a ride to my car, followed blindly without taking account of my receding surroundings, and ended up at a Taco Cabana far, far away from the office I had yet to complete. I felt so ravenous though, that I might as well have eaten with my hands. The salsa bar was so large that I wanted to scold it. Another one in the history of sad Taco Cabana goodbyes was said between Jeremy and I in the parking lot, somewhere out on Ben White Boulevard, I am fairly certain.

I am a man brought down by my own simplifactions. Just because you go get tacos, doesn't mean you go right back so quickly. Just because there isn't much work left doesn't mean you won't be torturing yourself with sleep deprivation. Just because there are only four rooms in a place and one was done and two were almost half done and one was more than half done, doesn't make it like there's only a little over one room left to complete. I worked from 3:30 am until just before 8 in the morning, fearing the arrival of other office folk seeing me there still at work, seemingly failing to complete the task on time, too tired to have imagined the excuse of waking up early. I used all the white primer/paint I had, and got two of the three white rooms completely done, but one only had the primer coat on, and some scattered double coating. Everything else was sufficiently completed. When Chad saw it, he had been in Houston and Dallas for the week, while graciously giving me the use of his resting pads, he said, "It looks great." He didn't care about the third office, and he didn't want to buy more paint. I felt weird not having completed it fully and professionally, and the hours I put in had exceeded the value to quality proportion that hourly pay scales are modeled on, but fuck it. I would receive my check over a month later.

Brian and I went out to the Independent Theatre in the East Side for a show called "The Encyclopedia Show". His friend Mike was in charge of booking and also performed in the show. I liked it on the whole, but certain contributors often went long and had gimmicks that quickly wore thin on my sensitive performance nerves. But for a few of the acts that failed to win my discerning applause, there were some that flattened me, nearly inspiring me to stand up and yell at them over silence or sufficient applause to stop doing everything else they do in life except for creating things like that, before remembering the social mores that have so slowly and painfully been sewn into the visceral underside of my skin through streams of high school, college, and "real world" faux pas. Instead, "I'm gonna get another Lonestar, you want something, Brian?"

After the show, I spoke with Mike and he offered me a spot in the next show in no uncertain terms. I got very excited at the chance to perform again, I knew I could rip up any topic they give me and give a focused, powerful comic performance, such as I have not often given myself a chance to do, but this trip has turned into a sort of self-gifted creative fellowship to myself, so things like this have become possible. The bungling of this offer has turned out, and it appears that I will not be on that show, but on the show in May with the topic of "Explosions". That'll do.

Everyone dispersed and I embraced a desire to hang out some more, so I tooled around the streets on the East side and saw just a massive amount of bicycles around. I felt like it was fairly friendly, if not disaffected territory, so I locked up and walked about. I saw a marching band practicing out on the street as many sat around watching in the cool air. I finally picked Shangri-La as the place I wanted to enter. Upon walking in, I bought a cheap beer as a punk rock band was finishing their set. I found a girl playing Mortal Kombat II and challenged her and kicked her pathetic ass. She was a nice girl. Immediately following that, the marching band filled the space with Balkan delight. I had found my new favorite place. I was also about to get my first healthy does of flakiness. Numbers are given freely because nobody here really wants to offend. Everyone wants to seem open to hanging out, but flaking out on returning calls or keeping your word is the last flimsy yet palpable line of defense of one's social box. I thought Danielle was cool, smart, and sincere, but it turns out she was only smart. Or not interested. But why then would she express sincere interest in getting coffee and practicing French with each other? Bah! One way or the other, she enlightened me that I had entered the after party for a social bike ride, it happens every Thursday. I suddenly had a plan for my next Thursday.

I searched for places all week through craigslist and word-of-mouth, but only a few leads came out. I needed something bikeable. One girl, Kelly, invited me out to her pad, and it was nice, and she seemed to like me far more than the creepo who came by before, but her dog was fucking wacky. As she was showing me around, this Bowser fellow was speeding around, jumping up on me, swatting at my balls with his paws, and drinking out of the toilet in preparation to come give me special kisses. I said, "He's drinking out of the toilet." She said, "Yeah, I let him. He doesn't do it when I pee in it, he knows." Good.

My other lead was a girl named Brooke that needed to fill her place. I said I only need a month, but I can buy you a month's time, if you happen to be out of options. She told me that she couldn't help, but she might know someone that could. And on this Thursday, I was to move the small amount of my things in to Brooke's former next door neighbor Nick's place. The rent? $350/mo+bills. The room? As big as what I got in Boston for 640. Nick turned out to be completely chill, and we got along right away. My airbed? Ended up having a slow leak. That morning, I woke up on the floor and thought of how Wal-Mart could solve my problems.

Trips to Wal-Mart are often noteworthy for the disastrous fashion offenses or grotesque displays of what I believe is a common occurrence of mismanaged, misdirected, and most importantly either uninformed, undereducated, or ignorant parenting and family dynamics, which are sometimes laughable in a way that later makes you sad, but can be singularly comic in their authenticity. Wal-Mart has the ability to make clear the state of socio-economic barriers, and sometimes you just meet someone that is batshit fucking crazy. As I search for tissue paper for the purpose of cleaning in between my buttocks, along with an array of other household items I require, I am confronted with a question from my blind side about where the carpet powder is. I turn around to find a stunning blonde, who apparently has a smelly carpet. I tell her, after a quick mental effort, that I would imagine, if I were Wal-Mart, I'd put it in this aisle or the next one. She goes on to the next, and I take a spin down that aisle too, because she is quite stunning, afterall, and slapped that Louisiana drawl out in front of me. Just tell me what she can say in that voice that is gonna make you turn around in the other direction? OK, OK, but even, "Mah dawg shits on mah carpet and mah playce is a disayster. Do ya wanna come owver and set qwuietly while mah dawg annoys yew and watch bayd Tey Vey with mey," sounds pretty cute. Way cuter than it would in Bostoniense. And even knowing her carpet might be in haggard shape, she was making an effort to rectify this, so I forged bravely into flirtatious conversation, and dreams of wasted time would soon come horribly true.

This is another instance of the "bump" application being a way to smoothly grab digits without potentially stumbling over a whole number exchange mess. "You got bump?" Or "Do you bump?" are way easier questions and take the chunky stuff out of, "How do you spell that," and "did I get this right, (XXX) XXX-XXXX?" Or maybe there are just a lot of cats out there that are just far smoother than me. They probably wear Ed Hardy t-shirts. I left 'Merica-Mart for Chad's, new air bed, shit tickets, and bachelor bibs (paper towels) all stocked into Longshot, and in the middle of my story about it to Chad, this chick is calling me, not even an hour after having met her, trying to invite me to her place. It felt like one of those "I'm a woman and you're a man, and we know what to do" situations, something out of the 50's where I could say something really chauvinistic and get away with it by winking and it's sexy, not horrifically derisive. Instead I declined because plans have been put in order. I'm supposed to go meet my new friends from the P&N show at Red 7 to see Dessa and P.O.S. of Doomtree, or in laymens terms, a hip-hop show.

I made my air bed so I could pass gas on it later, and I biked out to meet Chad at Annie's on Congress. I apparently missed happy hour but he and his friend Eric sure hadn't, and the genius goes ahead and asks a drinking man to give him a ride to the airport tomorrow. Of course he'll agree, he's both drunk and your friend...but will he remember? No matter now, I got an answer. Since happy hour at Annie's was over, we decided we had to leave...for REVERSE HAPPY HOUR at McCormick and Schmick's. Reverse happy hour should be manic hour, or anger hour, or something, in my opinion, but I'm not the marketing genius behind McCormick and Schmick's, so I just got a dollar burger and more beers, and Eric just kept insisting I that I should get whatever I want. The drunkenness factor was starting to make things weird in relation to the service and how sober I was, and how deep Eric was. Regardless, I felt bad having to jet, but they knew I had a plan.

I got over to Red 7 and fucked around by myself until the girls got there and we found each other. The show was good. The flirting was bad. The ride home was uneventful. The gas passing was lofted by 10-12 inches from the ground.

The next day, I start acting like a total idiot who thinks catching a flight is magic that just happens. I can't get a hold of Chad, but I'm not panicking yet. I wanted coffee so I drove my car downtown and went to Halcyon for great but expensive coffee. Having satisfied this need, I figure I ought to go back home. I start feeling the time crunch for my 3:25 flight, it was almost 2:30. I called a cab, and it seemed like it would never get there since the dispatcher estimated fifteen minutes. Finally, after a voicemail to Chad about giving me a ride, I get a text message from him about drinking caffeinated malt liquor on his balcony. I was incredulous at the arrival of it. I called and reminded him about my situation, and he says he'll race the cab over. He got lost and still managed to beat it. He picked me up at 2:48. We arrived at Austin-Bergstrom at 3:02. Chad said he'd loop around in case I missed my flight. I couldn't figure out which card I've used to purchase the damned ticket, so I went up to the check in counter, and the woman tells me the flight is closed. I explained my situation, and suddenly, she hopped out from behind the counter to take a peek at security. She assessed in the glance she got that I can make it to the gate, and calls the gate to see if they'll still let me in. Meanhwile, my ventricles are waiting patiently for her answer. . . Oh HELL yes, I'm good to go. She walked me up to security, and of course, whatever I've got with me, the TSA has a problem with it at this crucial moment. I finally make it through when I'm alerted that my Sigg canteen has liquid in it and I'll have to go back through security to pour it out. I can't believe I made that mistake, such a rookie boner, but there's just no time anymore! Throw it out. Forget it. It's gone now. A casualty of the journey. So after an utterly grueling six minutes of security that felt like twenty and an hour of questioning, I take off running for the gate. They're paging me as I arrive. I'm shouting, it's me! I'm Daniel Kerrigan! I was the last person to get on the plane. Relief set in but was rapidly followed by annoyance at leaving. "I should be drinking 4Loco with Chad," I thought.

Hours later and four screaming babies of limbo on the connected flight to Newark, I'm back on the East Coast, and I feel constrained and cold, and I've yet to go outside. I'm always happy to see my mother, who came to pick me up, God Bless her, it was midnight in Newark, New Jersey, but the feelings were separate. It wasn't the place for me anymore, and I knew it. But mom can make anything right with what she knows about me. I was a happy little fat boy back at home with Chinese food and television, and I would get to visit my Oma the next day. That's what was real there for me. Family and how they can take any place you don't want to be and make it not just acceptable, but welcoming. My annoyance was subdued into patience. Plus one look at the stars erased my antipathy, they're just fantastic in Greenwood Lake, even though I've seen them better in some other places. I always love the view up there, encircled by the fringes of treetops and overhanging branches. Good air, up there.

Statistics:

14 minutes from my apartment to Austin Bergstrom Airport
7 nights at Chad's, 4 on a couch
5 trips to the Snack Bar
$26 for a new Sigg (tax incl)
2:45 layover in Orlando
30 degrees upon arrival in NJ
35+ states better than NJ
$200 to paint Chad's office.
1 oil change
511 miles from New Orleans to Austin.
17.5 hours spent on the road from New Orleans to Austin (sleep incl)

Drinks from...

Day 45

268 Shiner Bock @Doc's
269 Lonestar
270 Orval Trappist Ale @Snack Bar
271 Real Ale Full Moon Pale Rye ale (Tx, Chantal, Kate, Ben)
272 Stella @Ben's

Day 46

273 Independence Stash IPA @Mellow Mushroom
274 New Belgium Ranger IPA @Lustre Pearl
275 Fireman #4 @Gabriel's in AT&T Conference Center Hotel (Thanks, AT&T Conference Center Hotel!)
276 Oban 14 (tx, attcch!)
277 Paloma (tx, Tara, bartender at attcch)
278 Austin Amber Beer (tx Tara)
279 Fireman 4 (tx, Tara)
280 Cuntpuncher shot (tx Tara, Chad)
281 cuntpuncher shot (tx Tara, Chad)
282 60 min ipa @dog and duck
283 512 IPA
284 something @Kung Fu Saloon
285 Yeah, somthing else, I think...

Day 47

286 Sierra Nevada @Chad's
287 Real Ale Full Moon Rye Pale Ale @Snack Bar
288 St. Arnold's Fancy Lawnmower Ale
289 Pinkus Jubilate Dark Lager
290 PBR @Ego's
291 Shot of Jameson (thanks, Seattle guy!)
292 PBR (tx, Seattle guy!)
293 Lonestar (tx, Seattle!)
294 Sierra Nevada @Chad's
295 Dos Equis

Day 48

296 New Belgium Ranger IPA @Chad's
297 Real Ale Full Moon Pale Rye Ale @Rio Rita (tx Brian!)
298 Firemans #4 (tx Brian)
299 Hoppus Ale @East Side Show Room (tx Brian!)
300 Sazerac (tx, Brian!)
301 Gordon Biersch Blonde (tx, Bri!)
302 Shot of Fernet
303 PBR @iron gate
304 Shiner Bock

Day 49

Nothing

Day 50

Nothing

Day 51

305 PBR @Mohawk
306 PBR
307 Fireman's 4
308 Rio Blanco Pale Ale
309 Lone Star

Day 52

310 Ranger IPA @Chad's
311 Red Bull vodka@ Independent Theatre
312 Lone Star
313 PBR @Shangri-La
314 PBR
315 PBR

Day 53

316 Fireman's 4 @Annie's
317 Fireman's 4
318 Ziegenbock @McCormick and Schmick's
319 Ziegenbock
320 Lonestar @Red 7
321 High Life 40 oz
322 Miller Lite
323 Lonestar

Day 54

Nothing

Trying to catch up my days to my current place, so several postings due in the next two weeks.

Dead or Sedentary Gators, and America's True Religion: Football.

2010-02-20T15:58:00.000-08:00

Days 29-40

Time really has a way of condensing the important things in your past into compact little memories neatly filed in my tornado wracked library. Once again, the ability to blog ebbed away while major action transpired. Not exactly ideal for blogging updates, and lends itself to long entries, but if you are enjoying this at work, I'll try to draw it out in a windy Southern fashion.

I guess I left off last Thursday, over two weeks ago. Oh yes, Thursday. And Friday...And Wednesday. These are days of the week. Perhaps it was Wednesday after all. I took the tricycle out for a spin, anticipating some action from all the people that were supposedly coming to town for the Super Bowl. What I got was bupkus and a mohawk. I rolled out to Las Olas and it was slow and I heard from others that the beach was slow, so I didn't make the extra two mile effort to get out there, and posted up in the usual places. I made about $30 and saw Joe Montana. I asked Marshall Faulk is he wanted a ride. I saw Larry Brown (Cowboys guy) outside of a jewelry store with his Superbowl ring. I said "Fuck this, there's nothing going on! " When I go back to the shop, I rolled up on pedicabbers giving pedicabbers mohawks. That's when I knew it was over. Au revoir, mon coif. I ended up with the skin tight, headslicked sides with a full beard and a stegosaurus strip. Very Mr. T. As I was getting buzzed, I said, "Fuck it, I'm not seeing any action anyways." I find that sometimes you just need a game changer. That very night out at the bar on South 2nd Street in Fort Lauderdale, I was getting mad looks from chicks. No opener required, I've got a ridiculous mohawk. "Hey, nice mohawk." Oh, hai. You on facebook? hahaha

Thursday was I guess more of the same. I made another $30 but went out to the beach this time. The duration of my evening was spent pondering whether I should quit the scene and go to a bike ride in Miami that goes by the name of "Loose Canons". It is essentially a route-less race from point A to point B, winner take a $50 bar tab. You better believe the cheap hipsters show up. I got there late because I had a fence stuck up my ass for most of the evening, and exiting any pedicab shop is difficult for me to exit quickly due to all the socializing I find myself prone to. I drove back, biked out to what ended up being a one beer stop at the quite northerly oriented "News Cafe", since Mike's friend, a lawyer had to go do legal things the following morning. I got a few eyefucks on my hipster bike as I rolled up extremely late with a gigantic chain lock slung around my shoulder like Andre the Giant's leotard strap. We rode home to Miami Beach (6.5 headwindy miles), misfired at a closing Zeke's for one beer, re-upped at Abraxas, then shut it down at the Abbey, par for the course, burning the night down with fine beer. My dad's girlfriend would say, "You do treat yourself well." I smile at this. Shall I instead inflict pain upon myself?

Friday had a fast start for work, but rain canceled what could have been an otherwise profitable night. Early to bed, early to rise, I guess.

I took my first ride on Saturday at around 2:45. I managed to get a ride from downtown to the beach, which was completely solid. Once I got down to the beach, I could not stop getting rides. I was not prepared for how insane things were going to be. The NFL had sponsored a concert out on the beach that tens of thousands of people were planning on attending. Performing at the concert were such artists as Barenaked Ladies, and..some other guys. And that band. Yep. But a lot of people were there and they were getting hammered, or old, and therefore, taking rides. It was similar to the 4th of July in Boston, except for more money, and the weather was good. It really took me by surprise and I went at riding so hard, I was being stubbornly short sighted about my body and what it was gonna have to do the following day, but this is what it was about. I was so tired when I returned at 1 am, and knowing that I had to be back at the shop at 9 am, I just had to crash there, rather than risk my Superbowl bike spot by exposing it to entropy. Also sleeping at the shop was Henry, a Spanish former stripper pedicabber. He told me he used to sing to the ladies and take off his clothes. I can still remember the tune he belted through the shop. I never saw him naked. Score. He slept in a tent he set up in the loft of the shop.

I slept well for four hours, solidly, but knew that I'd be interrupted early the next morning by all the commotion for bike prep. My first order was, of course, to obtain coffee. I stocked myself up so well with peanut butter and jelly, bananas, protein bars, a sandwich, my canteen, and a gallon bottle of water, AND a powerade, that I almost couldn't fit everything into the cab, but thanks to Tetris, I'm a champion.

I scored a bike that was geared high, had a fairly comfortable seat, and got out there. I tried working the casino area on the far side of the stadium, an area other guys cleaned up in for the Probowl. Scored a few good rides out of it because we were charging like 50 or 60 bucks to go from this lot to the stadium, but it was over saturated straight away, so I made the decision to quit that scene pretty early. I headed over to the near parking lots and found myself on a pretty excellent loop. I started out by handing out business cards and drumming up business, and soon I was inundated with people trying to get rides. I went from the parking lot to the stadium entrance (less than a mile of riding, usually a 5-7 min ride due to the nature of the traffic, at $15 a person + tip. Yup. That's what we were told to charge. I was typically getting $40 per ride. You can imagine this added up quickly. I even had a fairly productive mid game. Some people were looking for tickets into the second half, as some people began to trickle out. Laurence Fishburne had seen enough before heading to his limo when I took a ride to the scalpers' corner with two people that were willing to pay $600 for tickets that they could not properly authenticate, wasted about 15 minutes of my time, and gave me a "nice little tip" of $6 on top of the $20 I charged them. Just not getting it. But then you go back and you say to yourself, "That's a good problem to have. I was just dissatisfied with a $26 fare. Don't be a baby." And you go get the next one because it could be the hondo. Apres c'est, le deluge.

When the rush hit, I thought it would perhaps be weak, or too fast. I couldn't have been happier to put my pedal foot in my mouth. I completely forgot that after somebody wins the Superbowl, a celebration ensues. So when the Saints went up by two touchdowns, a stream of unhappy Colts fans trudged out, followed by exuberant, jubilant Saints fans, then followed by angry and confused people looking for a cab whose fanship was now a non-issue. Real life was setting in, we have to get out of here! I got back into this probowl loop going out to that Norland school for big bucks. As I rolled deeper and deeper into the hood, it became apparent to me that no cabs were making it down to the stadium because inbound traffic had been severed at 12th street (2.5 miles away). Dingdingdingding. I KNOW WHERE TO GET A CAB, IT'S THREE MILES THAT WAY AND I CAN TAKE YOU THERE FOR $50. NO YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND! NO CARS ARE COMING DOWN HERE, THEY CAN'T!!!! Back and forth, for a postgame that went like 2.5 hours, maybe 3. It just wouldn't end. Even when everyone was gone, I kept getting rides. I did a 4 miler for a facecard, booked back, picked up, booked back. My pedicab/Bostonian friends, think about taking every ride out of Fenway to Boylston and Tremont, making it back to Copley, then driving to the North End, just to turn around again. Really long rides. I became very nervous about the money in my pocket. Despite my whiteboy anxiety, I was the last pedicab in. Heading back in the bus with everyone, I realized that it would be an opportune time to hold us up for $25,000 or so, at the expense of just a few friendships. Last known location..... It might dramatically change my itinerary. Mexico.

When we all got back to the shop, we broke things down, and headed down to Grady's where everyone proceeded to drink $6 pitchers of beer and absolutely mao every burger in the pub. I got wings in addition to my burger. Yes, I maoed them, as well.

My last few days in Miami, without getting hourly specific, were great breathers for what I just went through. I got out up in Hollywood with Lauren, went swimming on South Beach in water that was as warm as it ever gets in Boston, took a run up and down the beach to air dry, went for some nice riding, and went on the car stereo installation adventure. I had the epiphany when I transferred belongings into my home in NY that I had traded my N64 for a car stereo back when I had my VW, or something, and never got it installed. So I put it in my car underneath the passenger seat and I wanted to make it happen, but upon venturing out to get the pieces, it became evident that I could not remove the faceplate, my car is old and the pieces I needed are difficult to find, even out in Little Havana, car stereo bootleg supercenter. So I bought a new stereo! It has an auxiliary jack to plug my iphone in for tunes, and a detachable face plate. Now I can put you on speakerphone in the longshot and broadcast you throughout the entire car, roll down my passenger side window (because the driver's side window still hasn't been repaired) and blast our conversation to the neighborhood as I softly bang my head to whatever you are sayin' that just rocks so hard. Isn't that just the coolest?

Actually installing this stereo was the trick. MVP goes to Mike Marshall for helping me with this. So let me lay this out so you can visualize this effort. From the dash down, I have the heating controls, the radio, a small storage bin about the size of a car stereo, and an ashtray which I use essentially for quarters. We take the car's plastic encasement off, extract the stereo, detach the bin, and discover that, since the stereo has not moved from it's rig in 26 years, it might be a bit stubborn. The screws that hold the stereo into its bracket for mounting in the dash are of poor quality, and we only get one out, stripping the rest of them out, trying everything, bike lube, brute force, to get them out, and failing. So the solution was to ditch the little storage bin, and install my new stereo where the bin used to be, directly below my other retro stereo. So now, after much manipulating of the car, I have a big block of stereo just kinda hulking there, and the ash tray, which we had to kind of break to make it functional as an ipod resting place/quarter holder, sits under it all. Necessary tack, had to have tunes. It sounds great, and now I can listen to my instructional Spanish CD's. I'm on lesson 4 of 8.

Tuesday ended up being the barnburner night of drinking before I skipped town. Sucked it up at trivia at Abraxas, had another bottle of Brooklyn Black Ops, went to the Sandwicherie, The Abbey, The Room. Mike ate shit on our ride down to The Room. It was madness. We hit like every great place in Miami Beach, including the terribly shitty place named "Club Deuce", a place where my hot older neighbor who I had serious late night sexual tension with, but turned out to be kind trashy worked. It's a tourist trap in a Dive Bar's clothing. So let's see, that would be khaki boxer shorts with ripped skinny jeans over and exposing them, a Hawaiian under shirt that has a nipple escaping and a trucker hat that is not ironic, but was given for actually being the "World's Greatest Dad", while wearing penny loafers. Also taking suggestions for this costume. $5 PBR??? I'll have a crab juice, thanks. One and we were done.

The End of the World...

Glade riding...

Some photos...

Unfortunately I didn't catch any video of right before we left when this last gator sort of mooed at me and made a little two-move step towards me. Then he just hung out nodding for a period of time before Mike warned me not to tempt fate. I agreed it was time to stop dicking around.

On the way back, we stopped at a Yelp three star reputed BBQ place where we had slobbering BBQ pork sandwiches, and I ordered gator bites, small fried bits of gator meat. The service forgot that I ordered or "didn't hear me" ask for them, so I took them to go. The smell of them. It permeated the car. Mike was gagging and he seriously wanted to break and jump out the window. I mean I ordered 'em, I wanted 'em, I had to try 'em! They actually really do taste like chicken. It's reminiscent of the quality of meat they use for certain Chinese dishes. Gamey, yet easily disintigrated as you chew the gator. But I saved my gator for later. Didn't have no refrigerator for that gator. It was my later alligator. (rimshot)

So when we got back, we put the final touches on my stereo, mashed the ashtray in under it, and then I had to head off for Orlando, where I was going to crash for the night. I stopped in Fort Lauderdale to pick up what was left in the shop, caught some of the guys and said goodbye. Of course before I left Florida, I had to go to Total Wine and grab some nice beers. I bought a good one for Keith, the general manager, just to say thank you for the work. Luckily, he was still kicking around the shop when I got in at 8 pm, so I got to give it directly to him, and he lit up. I guess I hit the mark. Then I hit the gas. Munching on gator bites up to Orlando, I zoomed there in about 4 hours to get out to a great dive called Willy's on Mills with Rachel at about midnight or 1230. The bartender was unabashedly sporting a belly shirt that I think I'll call insufficiently large. Or maybe it was just her gut that had a proficiency in size. She was off the chain. I think I accidentally tipped her $20 on two PBR's. It's only money, and it's gone now.

Now I don't regret staying an extra night in Orlando, it was raining, afterall so I didn't feel like pulling a 10 hour drive in bad weather, and it set me up for the masterpiece of partying that they call Mardi Gras, but Mardi Gras was so ridiculous that I ought to have been there earlier. But I'll let you be the judge of whether I did it right in the next entry. I think it's time to get brutally honest about it all.

Statistics:

234 miles from Miami Beach to Orlando
$11 for gator bites
$5 to gain access to the Shark Valley National Park and ride a bike with gators.
$1925 from the Superbowl. Best. Day. Ever.
25-30 The conservative estimate of how many times I heard Rachel say, "scheizer"
1 bagel
$100 for my stereo
8 total mohawks received by Oceanview Rickshaw drivers.
10-12 total hours spent on that last multimedia blog entry. What a bitch.

Beers from...

Day 30 Mohawk eve with Irish Dean, Sean, Eric, Serge

163 Miller High Life bottle @shop
164 Miller High Life bottle
165 Miller High Life bottle
166 Northern Lights IPA @Original Fat Cat's
167 Northern Lights IPA
168 Northern Lights IPA
169 Bud bottle @America's Back Yard
170 Stone Ruination IPA @Original Fat Cat's

Day 31-Mike

171 Tucher @The News Cafe
172 Sam Adams Noble Pils @Zeke's
173 Cigar City Jai Alai IPA @Abraxas
174 St Bernardus ABT 12
175 Abbey Immaculate IPA @The Abbey
176 Saison DuPont glass

Day 32-Shop/Mike's for poker/home
178 Dogfish Head 60 min IPA
179 Dogfish Head 60 min IPA
180 Dogfish Head 60 min IPA
181 Dogfish Head 60 min IPA
182 Sam Adams
183 Presidente

Day 33

NOTHING

Day 34 Superbowl Sunday

184 Pitcher of Bud @Grady's
185 shot of Jameson
186 Delerium Nocturnum @The Abbey
187 Fin du Monde

Day 35

188 Abbey Immaculate IPA @The Abbey
189 Abbey Immaculate IPA
190 Indica IPA @PRC Euro Cafe
191 Arrogant Bastard
192 Starr Hill Jomo Lager @Mickey's (iphone corrected me to "homo" lager)
193 Black and Tan
194 Cannot remember @PRC Euro Cafe
195 Half Stoudts half Abbey IPA @The Abbey
196 Half Stoudts half Abbey IPA
197 Victory Prima Pils

Day 36 Mike, Josh, Greg

198 Dogfish Head 60 min @home
199 Cigar City Jai Alai IPA @Abraxas
200 Brooklyn Black Ops
201 Arrogant Bastard Double Bastard
202 Red Hook Slim Chance
203 Chimay White
204 Sam Adams @Club Deuce
205 Half Stoudts half Abbey Immaculate IPA @The Abbey
206 Something @The Room

Day 37 Frank, Mallory, Ken

207 Sam Adams Noble Pils @Waxy O'Connor's
208 Sierra Nevada Glissade
209 Pilsner Urquell @Mike's
210 Father Theodore's Imperial stout @The Abbey
211 Fin du Monde
212 Anchor Liberty Ale
213 Presidente @home

Day 38 Ride and Drive

214 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA@home
215 Shot of Jameson @Rachel's
216 James and Ginger
217 PBR Tall Boy @Willy's on Mills
218 PBR Tallboy
219 Brooklyn Hoppenweiss @Rachel's

Day 39

220 Orlando's Red Ale @Jax's (where Rachel works)
221 St. Bernardus
222 Dogfish Head 60 Min IPA
223 Yeungling @Rachel's
224 Yeungling

Day 40

Nothing.

Mike wins MVP for Florida. Easily. Would not have done so many cool things if he wasn't around. It was so great to have friends down there, it's just sanity. Boston's starting to really end for me, as new and wonderful people and things pop into my life.

Severe Mardi Gras post next. I rolled into New Orleans at 1:30 central time with nowhere to stay, illegally parked my car at a motel I didn't stay at, assembled my bike and rode to Bourbon St. Why worry?